Stick it to the man

Earlier this week I was interviewed on the radio about my recent surgery to remove my bladder. Towards the end of the interview, following glowing words from my partner, the interviewer asked if I was a “tough cookie”? I went on to proclaim how I had been thrown a lot of challenges,  I was a big believer in positive mental attitude and how it had got me through a lot. Since that interview, I have reflected on my words. I have been praised a lot for my positivity, it’s something I pride myself on in fact but I wanted to take a deeper look into why I think it’s useful? Does it actually make a difference in terms of recovering from an operation for example? Or is it all airy-fairy and trying to defeat the inevitable? Did having PMA help when I was lying unconscious during my surgery? Could it have prevented any of the operations, the cancer diagnosis or other medical complications in the past? The answer is unequivocally no, of course it couldn’t. It wasn’t even that I smiled as I

In life, there are a number of things we can all accept being lost or replaced. Most of us replace our phones every two years, we might update our technology, buy a new chair, perhaps a new car. Those are things that are easy to process and accept. As someone who has a complicated medical history, its not completely surprising when I have been told, ‘We have to remove a tumour, we are going to cut this out.’ It makes sense, whilst I don’t expect a shiny new replacement   I know my body will be a better place without it. However when I learned I was going to have my bladder not only removed but also replaced, well that did leave me slightly flummoxed. I will rewind my story a little bit. Seven years ago, hours after finishing my final exam at university I became increasingly unwell. This culminated in a trip to hospital and many more trips followed all relating to urinary tract infections. By the end of the summer of 2012, I was left unable to urinate naturally at all. This in itse