The private hospital room in Chelsea was so relaxing I would have stayed for a week if it was affordable. It was more luxurious than the all-inclusive in Tenerife I went to last year, but sadly not in the same price bracket. One night in a hospital with designer soaps, a menu in Arabic and a gorgeous view of the London skyline nearly broke the bank, so I had to let them discharge me as planned the morning after my operation.

There wasn’t really that much wrong with me, and certainly not enough to call it ‘a journey’, as all health crises are now termed. I could have posted a selfie from my hospital bed with some word salad about positive vibes to get some people I don’t know to send me hugs and prayer-hand emojis, as is the raging fashion, but it was so much more complicated than that.

Thirty years ago, I ended up with titanium plates in my face, and while they were the best the medical technology of that era could offer, I’ve repeatedly sat in front of consultants over the years telling them that I’m sure they need to come out. No, they’re inert, they’ve always insisted. They can’t be causing you discomfort.

One specialist told me I needed therapy for imagining things. Another told me he could try to remove them, but he’d have to smash them out with a hammer and chisel.

I went round in circles until a straight-talking South African said he couldn’t do anything but he knew a man who could. Once I was sitting in front of this man, a surgeon who corrects corrections, his opinion was to instantly believe what I was describing.

Lying in the posh hospital room waiting for this man to come round to visit me before he opened me up, I wound myself into a frenzy. What if taking the plates out somehow made things worse?

As the light fell outside, I thought about getting dressed and sneaking out.

‘You’re really panicking, aren’t you?’ said the surgeon, finally marching into the room at 6 p.m. with his files under his arm.

‘Don’t worry, it’s only like DIY,’ he laughed. And he started writing out what he was about to do on a consent form, reciting as he wrote, as though he were making a list of stuff to get from B&Q.

Good surgeons are like this, I think. They set about fiendishly complex operations as if it’s plumbing or building work, which I find reassuring.

The best ones find your bodily predicament interesting, thankfully, because that’s the only way it’s getting fixed.

He told me the only problem he anticipated was if the surgeon who put the plates into my jaw broke the heads off the screws.

His face lit up as he explained how if this was the case he would have to attach new screws to the old screws to make them turn. ‘Dear God,’ said the builder boyfriend when I texted him this. He wasn’t at all sure I should be going through with it.

The anaesthetist came in next. He was Italian. I felt like palming him a tip as, like the executioner, he sat and eyed my proportions. ‘Nine stone,’ he said, reading the admissions form I’d filled out while he perched on the window sill by my bed.

‘Or ten,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Well I say nine just to flatter myself because I don’t really know. I haven’t any scales. Go for ten.’

‘Is 5ft 3in correct?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Oh yes, I know my height. But the point I’m making is, I’d rather you erred on the side of caution. Give me a really good whack of anaesthetic.’

He nodded and said he would. He asked if I had any preferences, pain relief-wise. I told him I like a simple oldie. Codeine, Valium… He nodded. This is the beauty of the private sector. The customer is king.

Half an hour later I’d gone down in a lift and was lying in a too-big gown on an operating table in what felt like a basement, shivering.

‘It’s freezing in here,’ I told him as he sat beside me examining my arms for veins.

‘Infection control,’ he said. ‘Oh that’s a really good vein.’

‘Glad you like it.’

‘Tell me something you like to do.’

‘You’re really panicking, aren’t you?’ said the surgeon, finally marching into the room

‘Horses,’ I said, thinking, come on, let’s get this over with.

‘Tell me somewhere you like to travel.’

‘Italy,’ I said.

‘Ah Italy,’ he said. ‘Have a nice sleep.’

When I awoke I felt so nice I couldn’t be bothered to come round. ‘Take deeper breaths. I’m not happy with your breathing,’ the nurse beside me complained.

I was very happy with it. I suffer with insomnia so to have a deep sleep was a sublime treat. This place was more and more like a spa break.

The cheerful face of the surgeon loomed over me to tell me that the plates and screws were out.

Even though he’d numbed my lower face with local anaesthetic, I sensed, as I lay back upstairs with the numbness wearing off, that everything maybe felt in some way better.

The next morning I had to make a midday flight back to Ireland if I wasn’t going to cop for double the already eye-watering hospital bill, so I persuaded the nurses to discharge me into an Uber after proving I could eat by spooning into my mouth the only thing I could in there, which was my least favourite thing, porridge.

I got a train from Victoria. And that was fine until I got out at Gatwick and my stomach turned and I was sick into a bin.

A no-nonsense Jamaican platform worker descended like an angel. ‘I’m calling you a chair,’ she said, and a man came with a wheelchair and insisted on wheeling me not just inside the airport but all the way to ‘assistance’, where he somehow had me put on the list.

I got wheeled through fast-track security, then through departures in a golfing cart with the oldies and infirms, who, it turns out, have their own rather lovely lounge, and then I was put on the plane via a cabin on a lifting crane.

It’s absolutely the way to do air travel. I made a mental note to puke in a bin every time I fly from Gatwick. All in all, the perfect end to a nice break.