Life Under The Knife

You are the Bored you will be asphyxiated, our ever selective humour will tickle your funny bone. Resistance is useless. Disclaimer: I was a massive star trek fan I could pass as borg these days with all the metal in my body. When I lost my hearing, my biggest wish apart from getting back my ears, was to have a hand held device like a star trek tricorder that translated what people said into text. This was in 1998. Voice recognition was brutal with bells on! You had to train each individual voice for many hours and the accuracy was still like cutting and pasting random words from a book. It was feck all use. When my teachers tried to use it, it resembled a shopping list albeit a very bad one. Fast forward to 2018 - the year I was reintroduced to voice recognition - and we have these wonderful little gadgets . Due to damaged vocal cords, I have a very bad voice I imagine its a cross between Darth Vader and snotzer from the den! So I struggle greatly with it but I do have so...

If you have ever spent an extended time in hospital, you will know that it is like prison. They make the beds as uncomfortable as possible to make sure you don't stay. There is no privacy and no entertainment and the food is not up to nutritional standards and you definitely have to watch out for the warden! The year I sampled the menu in 4 different Dublin hospitals left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm still traumatised by some of the things I saw on my plate. Chicken curry with cabbage on the side! I was woken many times by the sensation of having something poked in my ear thank god it was a thermometer! I spent two months in one hospital, made a brief detour to another for a brief stay. a further 3 months in another and the day before I was due to be discharged, I ended up in another hospital. This my friends is prison and the food is gruel and punishment. Some of my uncles and cousins orchestrated a prison break for Christmas day for a few hours mission impossible music wa...

They say that flying is a risky business, sky diving is less risky than flying next to a horny bloke. When I was 23, I was a shy, slim, blonde Irish lass. I was caught in the middle seat beside what looked like a smart business man in his 30's.  With people who don't know sign language, communications is through smoke signals and interpative dance or just a bog standard notebook and pen. He kept trying to talk to me I kept telling him I couldn't hear and to write things down and so the usual boring chit chat went on for the entire flight As we neared Heathrow, he started asking for my number. I kept trying to throw him off by telling that I would only be in London for a few days with family, no time for anything else. He was really persistent. In the end I looked at him and said there is no point in giving you my number because I am deaf ( this was before smartphones and I wasn't a big texter) God's honest truth, he wrote this on the notebook. OMG YOU'RE DE...

I had your average childhood but I didn't have your average granny! She was famous for three things: the cardigans she knit, her big heart and the fact she was the biggest messer going! I lived around the corner from her so I spent a lot of time in her house. That said, even the cousins that lived far away spent all their time there too. We had two types of sleepovers in her house, sleeping in the front room in a normal fashion where you woke up with somebody's foot in your face  - you were luck it was a foot! or sleeping in the back garden in a tent where nanny would come out and chuck a glass of water into the tent her version of a wake up call! There were so many water fights in her house, usually started by her. She was throwing party balloons filled with water before water balloons were a thing. She'd whip out the garden hose at a moments notice or feck a glass of water out the kitchen door as we sunbathed in the back garden. We all wanted to go to her house to play ...

The first time I had to do a Britney and shave my hair off I was 26. Hospitals are on my shit list  not it comes to head shaving for surgery. They took so much hair that a Donald style comb over was not an option. So I had to shave the lot off. With all of the scars I had I looked like ld beat somebody up. So I kept this monstrous sight covered with a scarf. I'm not sure if I did a Britney or a sinead O'Connor fyi I don't have the voice for either. I do have tattoos though. I was going to a friends bbq I had this new pair of high heeled boots. The problem is I could never wear heels! I walk like a baby deer on an out of control aeroplane. So I go to the bbq and drink a bit too much wine, come home and struggle to take off my SEXY boots. You know when you're trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that are 2 sizes to small? It was like that in reverse! I also had on a brand new pair of glasses. One particularly energetic tug landed me on the floor breaking my new glasses...

This is an episode of Mrs Brown's boys. Or it should be! There I was minding my own business brushing my teeth with my electric toothbrush. The base of the toothbrush got bored and decided to go for a walk. It took the scenic route to a crack in the middle of nowhere. As it fell down beside me, I tried to grab it but it went under me. Th more I tried to grab it, the more lost it seemed to get. I was rolling around the bed like I was having a demonically possessed epileptic fit, performing gymnastic moves that defy gravity. The more I tried to help myself, the more I did the exact opposite. I was in the throes of disbelief thinking to myself How does this shit happen to me. I can't believe it and I am me! In desperation I pressed the bell for the nurses assistance from experience I know you can wait ages to have the bell answered. So mean while, I continued with my efforts to find the toothbrush. I was bent like a pretzel in the bed. I haven't moved like that in years or ...

This is a bit of a shakespearean story. I had a raven called quotes after my eyeballs. When I was about 4 they were trying to see why I couldn't see very well. So I had a exploratory surgery to pop the eyeballs out to have a look. I always tried to make the best of my hospital stays even at that age. When things are shit, keep it funny. I used to joyride on the laundry cart as the nurses went around changing the beds and try and score some jelly when the food was being put away if there were any unopened pots. That was also the year I was introduced to horror and stuff I shouldn't be watching on television. The nurses set me up on a comfy chair in front of the telly one night not realising that I had switched the channel over to Day of the Tryffids! I gave plants and flowers dirty looks and sideways glances for ages after this!! It did start a trend where I would sneak out of bed and watch things that I shouldn't be watching! Prisoner Cell Block H to name but one.