April 2nd rolled up pretty slowly for me. It had been almost 6 weeks since I’d booked the operation to remove my prostate and it had seemed like time had stood still for me.
I had informed work at the end of January that I was going to require some time off in April to have the operation and then for the next 6 weeks I’d never worked so hard in all my life! Things went to panic stations for various reasons which I won’t go into here, but suffice to say my company should have kept it’s promise. At the same time I was in the process of developing a new team and therefore needed to recruit 6 people, as well as develop the procedures, job specifications, and framework the team would work to.
At a time in my life when I was supposed to make taking it easy things just got harder and harder. Stupid deadlines, lack of resources, bad planning (not mine mind you), lack of communication, and more conference calls than you would care to count took place in 4 short weeks. I was the only person responsible for delivering results in my specific area of expertise and at one point I lost it on a conference call, went off on one, and then hang up. Not the most professional thing to do, and not something I’ve done in 23 years at work, but I had just got so frustrated that I lashed out.
I had arranged to stop working the day before the operation, April 2nd, time was disappearing very fast. The ultimate deadline for the work I was doing was March 31st and from then on I would wind down before going on leave. It was at that point, April 1st that it was finally decided who I would hand over my work to. After a rushed meeting in a train station in Reading, work was over and I could start to get things organised in my head.
Early on April 2ndI got a call from the hospital asking me to attend my pre-operation assessment. We arrived on time, were shown into the room they had allocated to me and then a series of tests were done. I had a blood sample taken for god knows what, then my body was poked, prodded, and listened to in every way imaginable. I even underwent an ECG to make sure my heart was working ok. It was then that I found out that my heart murmur has finally vanished 
I was sent back home that morning with two packets of powered which would prepare my bowel for the operation in the morning. I took one at 15:00 and was expecting instant results yet nothing happened. In fact I actually got to wash the car inside and out before anything actually started to happen. I actually got to drink the second lemon and lime flavoured drink before things kicked off.
At first you get that feeling when you just need to go to the loo. Then your stomach and lower abdomen starts to pull and ache. You feel yourself bubbling inside, and then it hits you. Bang and the race to get to the toilet begins. All told it took about 5 visits to the toilet before things settled down but that put me at midnight and I had to be awake at 5am on the morning of the operation.
We had arranged for my parents to look after our children that final night so that I was able to get a good 5 hours sleep. It took my wife and I a while to finally fall asleep together so I guess i ended up with about 3 hours sleep before the alarm went off.
I had spent a lot of the time cleaning the car thinking about death. Not something you tend to think about day to day but with the operation only a few short hours away my mind wondered. What would it be like? Would I feel anything if I was to die on the operating table? Would my wife and kids be ok? Would anyone care? By the time I’d finished the car I had got things straight in my head. I was going to have the operation, and I would have to trust Mr Karim and his team. There was nothing I could do to change the outcome of the operation, good or bad, so I put my faith in a man i hardly knew and prepared myself to meet the Da Vinci robot.
The Da Vinci Robot. Not exactly R2D2 is it?