"Don't over-exert your body," my fabulous gynaecologist said to me yesterday at her consulting room as she leaned over my still sore abdomen to clean the gummy residue of the waterproof band-aid that had been, until then, nestled over three dispersed stitches. The protective covering now peeled off, the exposed stitches stare at me gingerly when I dare to look at myself in the mirror after a shower. The sutures look like miniature bows, the kind used to accentuate a gift-wrapped present. My belly is still swollen and so, naturally, I feel a slight disconnect from this body that I am supposed to not over-exert.

Eventually, when I wasn't either reading or competing with the advanced computer over Scrabble, I was catching up on films that had been on my must-see list and include every Cary Grant movie ever made. Representation pic/Thinkstock