I was sitting waiting with the wire stuck in, yeah, sort of…. But it wasn't unpleasant. I was just worried about waking up and ironic she said we wake everyone up, but then I didn't, I woke up before I was due to wake up.

 

How did that feel, waking up? Did you knew where you were?

 

Well I had no idea of what happened to be quite honest. And I think that sometimes you never know what happens in surgery. Because I'm sure if I hadn't developed any symptoms, nobody would have been the wiser. What had happened was, twenty-four hours following the surgery, my jaw became very swollen. I could hardly swallow, my ears were very painful. I remember walking in the rain to get to the GP because I wanted to see him urgently. It was almost closing time and he said, “Are you all right?” And I said, “No, I've got this awful ear, pain in my ear, my throat feels as though I'm not going to be able to swallow.” And he said, “Well”, and I said, “Well I've had some surgery done yesterday and I don't know what happened.”

 

And he rang [the hospital] while I was sitting in the surgery and they wanted to see me straight away. But I couldn't have the energy or the strength to come all the way back here because I live in [Kent]. And so the following day I did come back to see them and I brought my carers with me, the lady I call my mum who looks after me. And they told me that during the surgery I woke up before they had finished and because they had to relax my muscles to get me on, you know, to put me to sleep so quickly, this particular drug is the side effects of, still I think the tube they put down must have sort of damaged the side of my throat leading up to my ear. It was so fast, it was so quick, you needed to apologise for that but I wouldn't have known had I not developed, you know, got the symptoms because they don't always tell you everything.

 

But they did apologise and I think he was just trying to do the best for me. And I think the reason I woke up was because also he was taking x-rays each time he removed whatever. He was bringing the machine in and that takes time to bring the machine to take the x-rays and perhaps I just woke up, you know. So, but I wasn't angry.