Things I remember about today...

Being desperate to get to hospital but being delayed as I thought Ashleigh's car and a flat tyre.  It didn't!

Getting to the hospital and texting David to say I was in the car park and him replying they were just about to take Alan to theatre.

Getting to the ward and to his room and finding it empty.  Utter devastation that I'd missed him!

David running and grabbing me and dragging me round to the theatre suite and there was my boy lying smiling at me, wanting to talk about France again and grinning at me as his bed was wheeled into the little room where he'd be sedated, David beside him.   I stayed outside. I couldn't bear to watch him closing his eyes.

The pair of us going back to his empty room at the ward, sitting in silence sending and receiving million of texts from family and friends, whose out pourings of love and support sustained us through all of this hideousness.

A strange feeling of relief that surgery was underway.  Enough to make us head to the staff canteen to have lunch that required a knife and fork.  First meal this week that has.

Laughing at how the mac cheese and beef cobbler were just like school dinners only less tasty.

Back to the empty room to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  

Alan went into theatre at 10.30 am.   Six hours later at 4.30pm we hadn't heard a peep from anyone.  Anxiety levels reaching the stratosphere.

David asking the nurse if there was any word.  Her checking and telling us he was still in theatre.  

Feeling the nausea grip my throat.

David's sunken eyes.

Being told 10 minutes later that he was out of theatre and in recovery and we could go see him.

Being taken into the recovery suite and having to sit outside the curtain as the nurses made him comfortable.  So near and yet so far!   

David nudging me and saying "listen to what's playing on the radio", listening intently to hear it over the noise in the room then my heart swelling and the tears coming as James Taylor sang How Sweet it is to be Loved by You, a song so close to our hearts.  Surely a good sign.

Seeing Alan's sleeping, peaceful face and feeling my insides dissolve.   Getting in close and not being able to take my eyes off his gently rising and falling chest.  He IS breathing!   

Elation.  Utter elation.  

David saying, OMG, I could murder a fish supper and realising we were hungry for the first time in a week.  It was instant!

The recovery nurse telling me that she'd looked at Alan's stoma and "that by the way, if you're gonna have a stoma, that's the one you want.  It is perfect!"

Back to the ward with Alan....yes the ward, not HDU as expected.  

Sitting either side of him, grinning at each other.   Talking gently to him as he struggled to open his eyes through his drugged haze.

A surgeon popping in to see us to say it all went as well as could be expected and that we had definitely made the right choice.  His colon was completely diseased and the other drug would have made no difference whatsoever.  

Seeing him wake up long enough to register I was there before settling into a deep sleep.

The nurses getting David's bed ready beside Alan, saying goodnight to David, smiling at each other, not quite as euphoric as earlier, still over the moon at getting over the first hurdle but realising this is just the first step to recovery.  Now have to keep our boy infection free.

Home to an ecstatic Eleanor and Kenny then falling into bed and into a deep, deep sleep.