Tuesday 15 August 2017

~2 weeks post op

When I finally received the date for my operation I was so convinced that it would get cancelled that I didn't allow myself to get excited for it. It seemed like i'd be waiting forever for the operation to come round but it went so quickly!

I had to be at the hospital for 7am on Friday 28th July, by 9am I was in the anaesthetic room being poked and prodded with needles ready to be wheeled through the double doors into theatre. Surprisingly, I wasn't nervous at all - I think because it had been such a long time coming I was just so relieved to finally be there.

The next thing I remember was waking up in HDU with an oxygen mask on a wires coming out from every part of my body. They'd put some kind of vaseline or something on my eyes too so I couldn't see properly. It wasn't pleasant. Although, it's not the norm, the staff allowed my parents to come in and see me when I was brought round (for about 5 minutes) - I don't remember much of the first day, and very little of seeing my parents.

The next morning I was taken down to a ward, it was just me and 3 other, older ladies. It was a really pleasant ward, the staff were all lovely (particularly the good looking, Spanish nurse!) and the other ladies were all very friendly too.

On the Sunday, I was sat up and took my first couple of steps into the chair next to the bed. At this point I still had the morphine drip which was an absolute god-send! The day that came out, I definitely knew about it!

I was surprised at how quickly everything happened once I was moved to a ward, the catheter came out within a couple of days and I was able to put my own clothes on pretty quickly too. Throughout my entire stay at hospital I had no appetite and very little energy. I napped a lot during the day but never managed to sleep through the night - the pain always woke me up! It's hard to explain how painful/uncomfortable the whole experience was/is.

I had a slight reaction to the gauze too!

Since the operation I've only had 2 days where i've regretted going through with it. One day being when I was given an enema which resulted in me developing a temperature and breaking out in a cold sweat not sure if I was going to pass out or vomit or both! It was a horrific experience!
The other day should have been a happy day, the day I came home - I was fine all morning and even on the journey home. But once I was home and without the comfort of all the hospital staff and the reclining bed I really struggled to get comfortable and just had a bit of a breakdown!

But all-in-all I'm really glad i've had it done. I came home on the Wednesday morning following my operation and since being home i've improved massively. Everyone I've seen has been so surprised and impressed with how far i've come in such a short period of time. Everyday i've increased the distance i've walked and how long i've been sat up for.

Last Monday I had to go to the local nurse to get the dressing changed and the wound checked, she was happy enough with it to remove the steri-strips and sign me off to shower again (a massive relief!) However, since having the steri-strips removed the wound has weeped a little and we had a rogue internal stitch make it's way out which I had to go back to the nurse to have removed.

I'm still a while off returning to work and have an appointment back at the hospital at the beginning of September with my consultant to check the wound and hopefully we'll be able to see the x-ray finally! I'm hoping that appointment will be with my surgeon as we haven't actually seen him since the operation, i'm really intrigued to see how he thinks it went. Currently all we know is that he managed to achieve 90% of what he wanted to achieve but didn't managed to get as many screws in as he would have liked because there wasn't enough room...

So here's to the next 4 weeks.