3rd february 2026. i checked in at 7am with an empty stomach, a mild sense of doom, and my mum's voice on the phone telling me to stop being dramatic. the pre-op routine is mostly waiting: gown, IV line, forms, a marker dot near the surgical site, and a parade of kind nurses asking my name and date of birth like a pub quiz.
the anaesthesia part — the bit i'd feared most — was genuinely nothing. spinal anaesthesia meant i was awake-ish but felt nothing below the waist, plus sedation that turned the whole thing into a warm, fuzzy podcast i wasn't paying attention to. the surgery took about an hour. i experienced roughly four minutes of it.
dr. nazir did a flap repair — removing the sinus tract entirely and closing the area with a flap of healthy tissue, off the midline, which is the whole trick for keeping it from coming back. she came by the ward that evening, showed me a diagram of what she'd done, and said the words i'd been chasing for six months: 'it's out. all of it.'
the first 48 hours: honestly fine. sore, yes — like a deep bruise — but the hospital pain management had it handled. i was walking (slowly, with the gait of a haunted victorian child) the same evening, and discharged after two nights with a dressing schedule and a strict no-sitting-flat mandate. the discharge summary is in the files.