I had a whipple, and a liver resection, for a malignant proinsulinoma at age 32. I had adapted to living with zero blood sugar. They found it when it was small, the size of a pea, so my surgeon, Dr Koroush Haghighi, decided to give me the choice of 'radical' removal - everything within a few units of bloodflow of the tumour. I went that option. They removed 11kgs of things.

The night before the surgery, I had a meeting with the amazing anaesthesiologist. He gave me some sedation and asked me how I was doing. I said i was worried, google said 4% of people who have this surgery die. He said: Brendan - you're not going to die from the surgery. But every day, for the next six months at least - you're going to wish you did. Don't worry about dying. Worry about not dying. That helped.

I don't pass out. Like as a rule. Because of the low blood sugar. Because of the binge drinking, as a young adult. I stay standing with no sugar in my blood. I remember, retroactively, general anaesthesia, at least bits of it. I remember them talking during my surgeries. I had an endoscopy, and I remember the full twenty minutes of conversation. A story about the last patient - lying about being on opiates - a horrible colonoscopy. I remember snippets of my whipple. I couldn't see, but I could hear the doctors. I remember one surgical assistant, a lady, saying "oh boy, this is bad", and then I remember someone else saying, a young man, "his heartrate is spiking for some reason". No shit. Don't tell me it's bad if you don't want me to get scared. I guess they don't expect you to be listening.

I have 2/3 of a stomach, no duodenum, 1/3 of a pancreas, missing parts of my liver, no jujunemum, no gall bladder. 37 removed lymph nodes. Part of my large intestine gone. I don't know. I just remember months later I read the report and asked the doctor, you said you've sampled all these things, what did the samples say, and he said, no, sampled means removed.

When you have a Whipple, you don't know how long it will go until you can drink water. There's a big hole in your side and they pull green fluid out and when it's the right shade, you're allowed to drink. And they change antibiotics. There's a lot of weird things - they come in, and they draw fluid out of you, mostly green, from one tube, and red from another, and you throw up and you shit yourself but you can't move. So you just cry and you lose all shame and you depend on the nurses for everything. And if you're like me, you push yourself to be independent, and you end up on the floor of the bathroom, covered in your own fluids, crying and lost, until a nurse finds you, and hugs you, and cleans you.

And I took it worse than most people, because the drugs they gave me - they hydromorphone - and the ketamine - I didn't know, but I'm allergic to them. I thought that the nurses taking the fluids, in the night, pulling green out of me, were witches. I thought the ones who cleaned me, who told me it was okay, who gave me the paracetamol at the four hour mark - I thought they were angels. It's the only time in my life I've preferred the day to the night

And they give you lots of needles. Like, every two or three hours they wake you up for needles. That's your only consciousness. They jab them into the muscle, into the fat. Rounds of five, rounds of ten. I asked the doctor what one needle was for, I'm not sure if he was joking, he said it's to relax my muscles, in case I sneeze. Because if I sneeze, I'll die. It was hard to laugh at the joke.

During this, I'm really thirsty. It's like, day three, or day four. And two things compete for attention - how thirsty I am, and how sore I am. And I don't know why. Your mouth is so dry. You do anything. You just dream of cactus, of drops of water, of apples, of sandpaper. And I woke up, and I'd put my finger in my mouth, and I chewed my finger nail. I swallowed it, and it got stuck, and they had to go down and pull it out, while I was awake, which just made everything so much worse. They said I needed 37 bags of replacement blood, during the surgery. That probably didn't help the thirst. Anyway, a whipple is a lesson in thirst management. In delayed gratification. Lying against the world tree. Feeling every ounce of you, as cut meat, to be pecked at, and parched.

The worst night, the night four, where they just kept realising I was in more and more pain, and upping my hydromorphone and ketamine, which was making it worse. They didn't know I have a paradoxical reaction to morphine and such, so they just kept turning my pain up.

My wife had to leave at the end of visiting hours, and the building alarm went off. It was like, the siren was so loud, I was so scared. I disassociated, into pure blackness, but I could still hear the siren, but it became the sound of the wind. And I don't know, I jerked enough, that things ripped a bit, not enough that I needed more surgery, but just. They ripped. I heard them. And it hurt so much.

And I remember laying there, and I said, god, I may not have been a good man. And I don't think I believe in you. But if you're out there, please be out there. Please kill me. Now. I'm ready to die. I got diagnosed on my honeymoon, which was why I agreed to the radical surgery, I had a lot to live for, but at this stage, I was so thirsty, and I was in so much pain, I just shut my eyes, and I said, please kill me. Kill me right now. Kill me. And all I could hear was the carpark alarm. And the ketamine, and the hydromorphone. And then I don't know - it stopped.

For whatever reason, my grip on 'now' is so tight, that I see myself drift - between awake, asleep, anaesthesia, injured. My wife, and others, describe falling asleep as a discrete step. For me, it's a pathway. I watch it all the time. This was the first time in my life that I actually 'blacked out'. That I just disappeared. That the tape of my life "stopped".

And then I was dreaming. I dreamed that I had a spear in my side, and I was walking through the desert, looking for water.

When I woke up, and probably I was still dreaming, I was looking out the window, and there was a thunderstorm. I woke up with a flash, and on the point of horizon, a raven appeared in the window and it said: You can choose. You can drink water now, or you can choose the path of Odin. You are impaled on the spear. Do you choose to go nine days and nine nights without water? Do you choose the pain, or the peace?

I had a vision of the universe - of fermis paradox - that it is empty not because life is hard - but because we render the universe ourselves - and - our waste heat needs cooling. Not in the physical universe - in the information universe that it sits on top. That Clausius runs on Shannon, not the other way around. I saw that we humans think so much, as humans, that the universe around us has to be empty. And other species - ants, trees, aliens - they join their consciousness at a higher level - they make less waste heat. I realised we can fix this. That we need to build a canopy.

I also realised, that for every square inch of consciousness, there's an allocated amount of love, and of suffering. And I could choose to drink a full cup of suffering, or I could pass it along. That everyone can, deep down - choose how much to learn, how much to love, and how much pain to carry.

And I made the choice, that yes I did. I decided that I had the pain threshold. That I did not care how much it hurt. That I would not ever break, never again. I made an oath: not only would i drink my cup of suffering, I'd do my best to drink more, so others could have less.

I decided, that I would walk into Odin's hall - into valhalla - and drink every cup of pain they had. I would devour the suffering, and the pain. It would be my crucible, it would be my elixir. That suffering is what leads to growth, and that drinking from the cup of suffering is a crucible, a forge. I would let pain hammer me, and then I would cool. And then I would let pain fold me into more layers. I would be damascus.

I told the raven yes. Let me hang on the tree, for nine days and ten nights. For as long as it wants. I told that raven: I do not need water, my thirst is sated - by the tankard of pain - by the spear - the tubes - in my stomach.

As soon as I did this, I blacked out again. The pain stopped. For the first time in years, I was nowhere. I wasn't living, I wasn't watching. I was just gone. I think this is what everyone else gets, when they have anaesthesia. If so, it is bliss, and you are lucky.

As I stepped - discrete - into - and then - out of this void - it didn't feel like I was changing myself, it felt like I was changing realities.

The next morning, they realised I was allergic to the hydromorphone, took me off it, and off the ketamine, and put me on fentanyl. I was instantly so much better. As soon as the hydromorphone exited, my pain went 9 to 3. And the fentanyl made me a 0. I woke up on day six and I shaved.

On day seven, I tried to leave the hospital. I said I was fine. They told me to lay back down.

And, every day, they measured my colour of green, and I was not allowed to drink until the 10th day. And the first sip of apple juice they let me have, on that tenth day - it wasn't like a physical relief. It was like, the concept, of moisture. Like a ray of gods light, had touched my tongue.