Creeping down the hospital steps I enter a world of eye stinging colour. Even grey streets and footpaths pulsate with vibrancy. The red of an advertising sign glows so aggressively I’m forced to look away.

Too soon to go home. I’d rather have stayed till they removed the last drain from my torso. But the nurses made it clear enough. I was no longer “interesting” and could expect to be fairly much ignored if I’d insisted on roosting in their airless corridors.

Six nights in hospital is enough anyway. The food, the noise, the aggressively bad artwork. And my flowers are starting to die. Presumably the nearly seven centimeters of high grade cancerous growth that was removed from my right breast is now floating around in the clouds up there, merging with other particles and about to be rained gleefully down on the city. I have a pert new breast made from tummy flab and a reduced and lifted left breast to match it. The surgeons and nurses have done their job. We’re sick of each other.

Philip drives us home as if a bomb is lodged under the bonnet waiting to explode if he goes over a bump. He’s not wrong. I hobble, drain bottle sloshing inside a discreet pink drawstring bag, up the front path. I’m like a building due for demolition. One nudge in the eaves, a brick moved in the basement and I’ll topple.

It’s good and terrifying to be home. The table’s set for lunch. When I mention someone’s forgotten to put out forks there’s a pause bred from years of me leaping around to fix things before they’ve even started to think about going wrong. Mother’s syndrome. Once they’ve realised I will not, cannot, spring up from the table to get forks, someone does it. I need to develop patience with this new regime. There are no medals for being dictator of a small island nation otherwise known as a household. It’s good for all of us.

I can’t sit at the table for long. Bed’s better. And the sheepskin. To anyone about to have a mastectomy I’d say buy a sheepskin. Its pressure relieving softness is a great comfort. I’d recommend indulging in anything that makes you laugh – Flight of the Conchords dvds and books by David Sedaris, in my case. Overcoming a life long prejudice against sleeping pills has helped me through restless nights. It’s also worth welcoming people’s good wishes and prayers, whatever denomination they come from.

A surprising upside has been wonderful warmth and encouragement from other women. From nurses to casual acquaintances, every woman knows someone who has faced the disease. The support and compassion of the breast cancer sisterhood is truly powerful.

My sister Mary says she encountered the same thing when she underwent her mastectomy in New Plymouth nearly 10 years ago.  I’m thrilled she’s able to visit for a week. She and daughter Lydia, who abandoned her Sri Lankan ashram to be here, make the best nurses.

I still think of Mary as the big sister I shared a bedroom with, the revered “grown up” one. We look like two middle aged matrons but we’re still girls at heart. Sisters. Lydia massages my swollen abdomen every day without complaint. I’m not sure I was ever such a good daughter.

It’s healing time, not only for the body but for relationships, too. When  Lydia returns to Sri Lanka I’m grateful for her tender care and accept she’s on her life’s journey.

Arranging myself comfortably as possible on the sheepskin at night, I wait for the sleeping pill to kick in and listen to my heart. There are words in its rhythm I never heard before  - “Thank you, thank you….”