I've had a sleep now. I wanted to sleep at the hospital, but I fell asleep at the wrong times, and at none of the right ones.

The anesthetic due to wear off in the next 20 minutes or so. I'm not looking forward to that. At that stage I plan to watch dvd or something.

I arrived at the hospital at 6:35am. I was a bit late. I was tired. It was raining. Dad was with me. Once I was in the room Dad went to park the car and I picked the last couch in the waiting room. It was the most uncomfortable couch there I think. It was like a pretend couch. No room for you bum.

I got admitted at 6:55 and Dad left me to it. He went home to help Mum with Han. He said he'd call the hospital at around 9 to see when I would be ready to go home. I'm not allowed to drive for 24 hours.

I didn't have my book with me, which I think was the biggest mistake of the day. I read Time magazines from 7 in the morning to 9:15. Which wasn't too bad but they were all really old. Pre-September 11. There was one thing in the magazine about how the US military was going to have to fight for funding with greenies and it wasn't looking good for the military. Things have changed a bit now mes thinks. Today was on tv but it was turned down low. I couldn't really hear it. The waiting room was really boring. I kept drifting off to sleep but didn't want to incase my name was called out. I could have had a sleep for two hours and not missed a thing. That would have been nice.

Eventually my name was called out. And I was taken into a special area by a nurse who took my temperature, blood pressure and pulse. That was mildly interesting. I was enjoying being a patient. Especially since I felt fine.

She gave me two gowns, booties and a cap and told be to take off my clothes, except my specially picked Sydney CBD boxers, and put on the surgical gear. She sent me to a change room. After I was changed I was to sit in the reclining chair with all the other people dressed like me and wait to be called. So this is what I did.

When I sat down there were three other people, all in the senior citizen age bracket, sitting in reclining chairs (although only one of them was reclining) watching Disney Playhouse on TV. It occurred to me that that program seems to be a direct rip off of Playschool (The old Playschool though, before they changed the look and sacked Benita), they even had Monica. It wasn't a particularly good episode. They were talking about dinosaurs, and I've seen the Playschool dinosaurs video many times, so they couldn't suprise me.

At 10am A Country Practise came on. That excited me. I hadn't had anything interesting to do the whole morning, now I had some coolness. ACP is a wonderful memory of my childhood. I used to love the show. But just as I was getting into the story another old woman arrived and complained so we had to channel changed to Kerri-Anne. Very dissappointing. Can't ruin a guy's morning more than making him swap from A Country Practise to Kerri-Anne, especially if you just sat through Disney Playhouse.

Anyway, I sat in my seat watching crappy morning television, bored to bits, with the only thing changing the situation was when cooking came on TV and then I was bored to bits and extreamly hungry (I hadn't eaten or drunk anything since 9pm yesterday, doctors orders).

While I was sitting there a nurse came in and said very loudly to me, "Tom French, I heard that name out there, I thought I knew that name, how's your mother?"

It was one of those terrible situation where you have no-idea who the person is. She didn't even look vaugely farmiliar.

At 12 another nurse came in (it never occurred to me how full of nurses hospitals are) and told me it was time. Yay! I was very excited. She took me down lots of corridors and past important hospital machinery and into a room that was next to the operating theatre (I could hear the oxygen and the ECG machine going, very ER). She told me to get on the bed and take my outer gown off because I had to get an injection. Now was my chance to show off my snazzy boxers. I took my outer gown off and the lady un-did the ties at the back of the other one. I'm sure she would have seen the boxers, and been suitably impressed. Then she told me to lie down and she covered me with a really toasty, warm blanket that must have been in the blanket oven, it was so good. Once she had made sure I was warm, she kept telling me it was very cold and they don't like having cold patients, she left me with yesterday's Newcastle Herald to read. And there I was again, waiting.

Later my surgeon came in and the nurse came back. She started hooking up an IV drip. This worried me. I didn't want a drip. That would ruin my day more than having A Country Practise turned off. Luckly the surgeon told her I wouldn't need it as I was only a local anesthetic. Then I felt much better. At 12:20 (there was a big clock on the wall) the anethesist came in and jabbed my toe. I asked him how many jabs I would be getting. "Four, but you won't feel two and three" was his reply. Well I felt 'em all. It was the most pain I've felt all day (so far, the anesthetic is still going strong, 6 and a quarter hours later). But they weren't too bad. Soon I only felt tingling and I was told they were almost ready to go into surgery. It had only taken 6 hours.

The theatre (number three in case you're wondering) was pretty cool. They had a really big light on the roof, and a little-er one next to it. There were ECG machines, drip machines, oxygen things, and probably many other machines that went "ping". It was cool. They didn't give me any of them though. They did use the big light.

The operation wasn't all that intersting. I would have liked to have watched but I was covered in blankets (the nurse was still insisting that I kept warm) and thoes green surgical cloth thingys. I saw a little bit though. And I felt the people cutting, no pain, just pressure. My surgeon didn't operate on me (I think he might have been having a cup of tea), his registrar did. The nurse that kept me warm asked me how my mother's day was. The rest of the people in the room weren't very good at making conversation with me, I suspect it's a skill they don't have to practice often.

At the end of the "procedure" (1pm) the surgeon did come in. He looked at my toe all wrapped up, poked the top of it and said "Looks good".

I was wheeled back to the recovery room on my bed and I met Heather the chirpy nurse. She was cool. Kept calling me Lovely Thomas, or Darling Mr French. She gave me some water and a 100mLs of crappy, Orchy apple juice. I also got a beef sandwich. It was all a bit bland (the water was good) but I enjoyed putting something in me.

Heather called my mother, or Mummy as she called her, and told her she could pick me up at 1:40.

At 1:45, Mum arrived, Heather got me my clothes. I got dressed. My toe started bleeding so I didn't put my sock on. The other nurse sent me back to bed and covered my dressings with more absorbant things and told me I was free to go home.

Ingrown toe-nail gone. I've had that toe for 2 1/2 years. Now it is gone. As I told the nurse, "Now I can stub my toe again"

It's time for a dvd.