24 Hours Later

I should probably apologise. This is turning into too much for people, I know — silly little updates, diary scraps, fragments. But for my own sanity, and because this is such a monumental moment in my life, I think I need to keep recording it. Even if I stop later, for now I might post a little more often than usual.

Yesterday, I started to notice my face settling ever so slightly. Now, when I say “settling,” what I really mean is that it’s still like an enormous balloon with the outline of a face plonked on top of it. That’s the only way I can describe it. Everything looks absolutely ginormous, but with the vaguest outline of what my features are supposed to look like beginning to appear.

Photographs don’t quite capture it. To other people, they might look like progress, but when I look at myself all I see is swelling — vast, unrelenting swelling.

And then there was a moment of grace. One of the senior nurses here, with thirty years of experience behind her, spent nearly ninety minutes washing and blow-drying my hair. She was so careful, because some of the mesh at the crown had been damaged during surgery, where they’d inserted drains into my skull, and she didn’t want to make it worse.

The care she took was astonishing. And the difference it made to me — to feel clean, cared for, human again — was beyond words. For the first time since the operation, I felt almost amazing.