THE CHECKLIST TO FREEDOM...

When Lesley eventually went to terrorise someone else- many of whom were staff or patients on entirely different wards, they did in fact call her daughter and partner, who arrived just in time for them to sedate her. It was pretty traumatic for us all. And so flipping sad! Lesley was great when she first arrived, now she thinks we're all trying to kill her. (Unless she kills us first.) The whole experience shook me. The realisation that I couldn't run from anything anymore! And there was nothing to stop her storming my cubicle again. All of a sudden, I didn't feel safe here anymore. If I could lock my curtains, I would!

The next morning, we were all exhausted after such minimal sleep, but it was like “Don't mention the war!” as nobody was mentioning last night's horror show, and kept all eye contact and topics of conversation fixed firmly on their glue-like porridge. There wasn't a peep out of Lesley herself, until there was a rustling at the edge of my curtain… speak of the devil. She staggered into my cubicle, stood there looking like a real-life zombie, then went:

“What's it like, living with the dead?”

How fitting. Before I could reply with a “I don't know Lesley, I'm dead too” - Which is honestly how I felt after last night, a nurse quickly intervened, calling “Lesley... Back to your cubicle please!” In a tone like you would say “Staaay!” to a naughty dog.

I was absolutely euphoric when the physio arrived with a wheelchair to take me to a whole different wing of the building, to a whole physio suite, to practise stairs on my crutches! As if this wasn't exciting enough, the wind in my hair as I was pushed along the corridors felt like I was in a GT3 with launch control activated! This was the most speed I'd felt in what seemed like a lifetime! Once arrived, I think all the other physios thought I was definitely high on something, as I was acting like a giddy 18-year-old that had just arrived at The Warehouse Project for the first time. Squealing with excitement, marvelling at the amount of weird gear, and unknowingly flashing myself to everyone due to my flappy hospital gown. Thankfully one of them leapt up and quickly triple-knotted the ties gaping all down the sides. Nobody wants to see that! Although I was off my morphine drip and detached from the ‘Fun button’ as I called it, I was definitely high as a kite. To see a different set of walls, people and apparatus, and be so far away from Lesley, felt incredible! I did think getting me to practise on a pretend set of stairs on crutches was a bit of a tall order. If I fell down them and smashed my shin, I’d be just as bad as Pain-in-the-arse Jan! But I had to try. I had to conquer these fake stairs in order to get one step closer to the docs letting me go home. (I was also forgetting I live in a top floor apartment with no lift.)

With the help of the lovely physios, I nailed it! They all cheered when I got to the top and I felt like the biggest Rockstar ever! Mission complete. Unfortunately, there were many other things I had to prove I could do before they’d let me go home: one of which was having a poo. That still wasn't happening, and it had been over a week. But let's not go there! Tomorrow I’d have to prove I could at least get myself to a loo on my crutches and get up and out of bed unaided. Since when did the most simplest of tasks become so difficult? Don't ever take shit for granted again folks! Literally.

As another day ticked by, I started doing little things to make me feel like I was getting closer to coming home. Like demanding they took all the adapters out of my arms, which were dangling for no reason now I wasn't on a morphine drip or requiring anymore blood transfusions. I started showing off my crutches and zimmer frame skills while accompanied by a nurse, as I staggered through the ward imagining I was waving a placard that said ‘SET SOPHIE FREE!’

Once I'd ticked more of these necessities off the fit for discharge list, some of which I won't go into detail, there wasn't really much more they could do for me. Other than hand me paracetamol every four hours, check my ‘always low’ blood pressure and take my food order for a tasteless lunch and dinner. I'd had my surgery, had all the tests, visits, pokes and prods… it was now simply a case of letting my body heal, as the long road to recovery began. They’d told me FULL recovery would take at least a year, but I’m choosing not to believe that! I’d been here a week and a half already and I was starting to forget what the outside world looked like, and what northerners sounded like.

“Are you still here?!” Nurse Harvey would joke each morning. He had the most banter and always tried to make us laugh, although sometimes I couldn't work out if I was meant to.

“I have no idea mate, please could you ask them about discharging me?” Was my response every day.

In an absolutely shocking turn of events- head nurse on duty Dana popped into my cubicle saying they were ‘looking at potentially discharging me later today’. Holy moly! Now, this wasn't exactly straightforward given the fact I was a 5-hour drive away from home and they were planning on getting me there via ambulance, but we've got to keep the faith it can be done!

Quickly- ring dad, tell him to get himself from Wales to Manchester, ready to step into his temporary carer role and help me up the stairs! Jump on Instagram stories and tell EVERYONE to cross EVERYTHING. And hope the pharmacy could get my bag of medications together in time. Which at that point I had no idea what they would consist of…

Sadly, my excitement was short lived as a mere 40 minutes later Dana appeared again, saying my bag of medications wouldn't be ready so it'll have to be tomorrow now. What exactly was in this bag? Other than the ugly compression stockings I was to wear and probably enough paracetamol boxes to fill a Boots.

Anyway- I decided to try and enjoy everything I possibly could on what was now set to be my last night on Surgical Ward 5 (hopefully). Even my tasteless dinner was more enjoyable, knowing once I was back in the outside world, rice would have flavour again. The nurse scanned my wristband for the final night's painkillers which always made me feel like I was at a shit theme park or nightclub as they'd scan my unique bar code to pull up all my records. I swallowed my pills and off she went. What? No injection in my stomach tonight? Brilliant! I bet I've had my last one of those without even realising it!

Then Dana appeared again. This time with a large paper bag, stuffed full of boxes.

“Right Sophie I have your injections here. In order for us to discharge you tomorrow, you're going to have to show that you can administer your injection on yourself. So, we're going to have a little practise now…” she explained, as she held up a squishy pad of fake flesh with a pretend belly button in the middle.

“This represents your stomach and the area around here you're going to inject…”

As I asked for the billionth time: “IS THIS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE??!”

Evidently not, as she whipped out a syringe to show me how to jab it in the pink putty-like pad.

“OK- now your turn!” She smiled sweetly, having given me all the encouragement she could. I began to sob.

“I don't think I can do it!”

For some reason I could handle a broken femur, but jabbing myself in the stomach when every fibre of my being is screaming NO, was seemingly impossible.

“How many of these do I have to do?” I cried.

“Every night for the next six weeks to prevent blood clots. You’ve had major surgery Sophie, it was a big injury!”

“WHAT?!” (I was properly bawling now) as I hovered the needle above the pinch of my stomach flesh I'd gathered in my other hand.

“I can't do it!” I sobbed.

“Sophie- you're going to have to do this in order for us to know you're capable of going home. Look at me, you can do it!” Soothed Dana, calmly yet assertively.

On probably the 100th count of 1,2,3, I reluctantly plunged the needle into my flesh and compressed the syringe in. It was over. Apart from the fact the pain in the afterburn worsens after the actual jab. And I still had another 41 of these to do when I got home. But that's the point: HOME. I really wanted to get back to it and I really didn't want a blood clot when I got there…