Hamish and I are on first name terms. Logical. He has more intimate knowledge of my anatomy than anyone. Hamish and at least three other surgeons have spent the past seven hours rummaging around inside me. Busy as Santa’s elves, they’ve hacked off my right boob, along with 6.6cm of cancerous growth, and removed a lymph node from under my arm. Hamish and his assistant then chainsawed into my abdomen, harvested a roll of fat and stitched it in where the boob used to be.

Hamish compares breast reconstruction to gardening. In the way a newly transplanted seedling requires water, a new boob needs blood. The next 24 hours will be crucial. If he and my irrigation system do their jobs properly the new boob will “take”. If not, we’ll all have a good cry, I’ll be wheeled back to theatre and have the thing lopped off. Well, it takes the mind off cancer.

His face appears in a circle of light. Cheerful. He’d warned I’d probably forget most of this part. I do. Next thing, I’m wheeled down a grey corridor.

“Your husband’s waiting for you,” a nurse says. Sounds romantic.  What could be sexier than six drains, a drip and catheter with matching oxygen mask? Oh and legs encased in loud, hissing plastic tubes – to do with reducing clotting risks.

It’s good to see the darling man, though he looks tired and worried. The only thing worse than being sick is upsetting people you love. I send him home to sleep.

A nauseatingly vivid abstract print bears down from the opposite wall. Landscape, presumably, but a man’s face is hidden between the beach and the cliff. If I could climb out of bed I’d hurl the bloody thing out the window. Except the windows don’t open.

A nurse called May wakes me every half hour to record vital signs and to listen for a pulse inside the new boob. Apparently, I have low blood pressure and a fever. I yearn for sleep. Towards dawn I hallucinate I’m a prisoner of war being tortured with sleep deprivation. Yet May’s such a gentle, dedicated nurse I’d swim Cook Strait in fish nets for her.

Visitors. An elating, exhausting prospect. I long to see family - but not if they’re alarmed by my bottles of blood draped around the bed like macabre Christmas decorations. Older daughter Lydia flies in from her Sri Lankan monastery and presents me with a bottle of holy water. She sits in a corner and chants, causing a nurse’s eyebrow to twitch. The sound is surprisingly soothing, however. Sleep drifts in.

There’s no real time in hospital. Days melt into night. Nursing shifts tick over. The outside world peels away. Observing life from a distance I feel deeply grateful to have a loving family, and friends who’ve filled the room with flowers. The only regret is I took life too seriously on the assumption there’d be decades left over for fun.

I haven’t cried yet. Is that wrong? When younger daughter Katharine brings in her camera with a video of her school choir singing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” I weep uncontrollably. Strange considering the soloists sing flat.

Hamish visits, chirpy. The new stomach boob has “taken”. After he’s gone I watch a television programme about the history of British architecture. As the commentator raves about the buildings of Bath, I hobble to the loo and promptly faint. Four nurses appear. She’s anemic, says one. Low blood pressure says another.  Sleep deprived, says a third.

Back in bed, glumness hovers. The phone screeches. It’s the breast cancer surgeon with the pathology report.

“We got it all,” she says, triumphant. “I wasn’t sure we would considering the size of the growth. Another six months and it would’ve been absolutely everywhere.”                   

I make her repeat it three times.