Where was I? ... oh yes, the day of the operation ... So anyhoo, we arrived at the hospital at 11:30am as instructed and headed to the pre-surgery award where we were met with the news that bed shortages meant the surgery might be cancelled. Happily it went ahead as planned after a lot of waiting around and being measured and questioned on things like allergies, the presence, or lack thereof, of dentures and what my choice of anaesthetic was. The anaesthetist explained the same thing I'd read in my 'Anaesthesia and You' leaflet ... that a spinal anaesthetic would enable me to awaken quickly after surgery and mean that I could eat sooner than with a regular general anaesthetic. To be honest I had no clue which option to go to and so I tried to get away with opting for 'whatever option the anaesthetist felt was best for me' ... the response from the anaesthetist was a quiet snort of derision and a look that said 'no chance buddy, this decision is all yours'. So I figured that a spinal anaesthetic would mean that I would be compos mentis when I saw Mark after the operation, which would mean he would worry less about me ... Boy, was that the wrong decision! (but more of that later)
Mark stayed with me for a good few hours before heading off to wait at a friend's house and I sat with a book open re-reading the same page over and over again and trying to ignore the crappy daytime TV playing in the background, while I waited for the nod that it was time to go down to the operating theatre. The nod came at about 3:45pm and I wandered along with the Staff Nurse, down stairwells and along blurred, empty corridors to the operating reception area. By this point I'd explained my art project ideas to the Staff Nurse and she excitedly relayed my ideas to the young nurse who was registering my arrival, who then looked at me as if she wasn't sure whether I was amazing or crazy.
At some point the anaesthetist flew into the room and started preparing the back of my hand for some unmentioned pre-op medical thing, all the time firing questions at me about allergies etc. She then realised she'd forgotten something and rushed off, only to re-emerge at the same speed a minute later to carry on where she'd left off to install a cannula in the back of my left hand. While she'd been gone the young nurse explained that the anaesthetist always rushed around like that - not exactly one of the qualities I look for in someone who is shortly going to insert a needle into my spinal column but it seemed too late to back out at that point.
I won't dwell much on the process of being given a spinal anaesthetic but suffice to say that a whole room of people suddenly shouting "don't move!", then slightly freaking out at you while the anaesthetist urgently exclaims "is she symmetrical?" is not something I ever want to experience again. The next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room with about four people, including the specialist who'd performed the operation, standing at the foot of my bed who all walked away as soon as I opened my eyes. I glanced up at the clock above the doorway and it was 6:30pm. The next few hours drifted by in 20 minute chunks as the staff in the recovery room flitted back and forth, regularly checking in with me and letting me know what was going on.
I was in the recovery room for 5 hours before being moved to my allocated space in the Gynaecology ward. My memories of those 5 hours are a bit jumbled and fragmented but they're made up of a morphine trigger for me to push, discussions about the amount of blood I was losing, a second cannula being fitted to my right hand so that they could start giving me a blood transfusion, me asking someone to phone Mark to make sure that he knew I was okay, speaking to Mark and realising that he'd sat around at the hospital for a couple of hours not knowing if he'd be able to see me (which he couldn't in the end), and hearing one of the nurses telling her colleagues that she was staying past the end of her shift to look after me until I was stable. I think that she finally left at about 11pm and I remember looking at her name badge so that I could remember her name and thank her later ... I think it was Allyson but I can't remember any more than that :(
At 11:30pm the porter arrived to transfer me to the ward. The next morning it became clear that I was being kept as 'nil by mouth' so I'm guessing that they were anticipating having to take me back down to surgery if the bleeding didn't let up. I had an oxygen tube in my nostrils, tubes coming out of the cannulas on each hand, a catheter tube coming from (ahem) down there, a drain tube coming from the left-most end of the surgery incision and two tubes attached to automatically inflating cuffs around both my legs ... in other words I wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.
At some point during the morning I got a check-up visit from two doctors, one of whom had been present during the surgery. He confirmed that surgery had gone well and that they'd removed a large fibroid, he held up one of his fists to give me an idea of how large it was (ewwww!). In the afternoon the specialist who'd performed the operation visited and gave me further information about how it had gone. Firstly they'd removed a large fibroid, he held both of his fists up together to give me an idea of the size (ewwwwwwwww!). Both ovaries had been left intact, which wasn't a massively big concern for me but came as a relief all the same. He'd tried to remove the cyst but it was attached to my lower intestine so all they could do was open it up and drain it. While they had me opened up they could see that I had endometriosis which needs further treatment in the shape of a monthly injection over a 6 month period. Not all good news but pretty good news overall as far as I was concerned.
I think that's probably enough gore for now ... next time, the process of recovery, life on a hospital ward and the inherent comedy of the 'caution: wet floor' signs.
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