Thoughts from the frontline - 22

Hi folks - I'm home!!!! Yes I am back at the keyboard this morning after over a week away having bits being taken out of me. It's been "Dead Man Walking" though to "Ring of Fire". Now where do I start? I suppose I should start on the Wednesday 12th August, the morning before I went into hospital. This was it. The actual day. No going back. No more preparations. No more wondering. This was what it felt like to get in the car to go into hospital for a major operation. Dead Man Walking. A journey I had to take. No further choices. No appeals or phone calls from someone to say "just found out it has been a big mistake, you haven't got cancer after all". The clock had struck midnight and I had had my last hearty meal of choice. The walk was now to begin. Over dramatic? Not on your life! I had never had a major operation in my life and this one was major. About 6 hours under the knife as they removed my bladder and prostate, cleaned out my lymph nodes, cut a section out of my bowel and sewn it back together again. Taken that small piece of bowl and connected my kidneys and then poked the end through my stomach wall. Sounds simple doesn't it! :-) If you have never had a major op you will not know the feeling and there is nothing I can write that will give you that understanding. If you have had a major op you will know exactly what I mean. You can be brave. You can be resolute. You can be well prepared. But you will still be scared. Nervous. Frightened. Nope, it's not fair but you can't run away from what you have to do. It really is now or never. We do not have a choice. For once in our lives we really do not have a choice. Have the op or die. It's as simple as that. Ok, maybe not tomorrow but if you want medicine to help prolong your life then this is it. What the doctor ordered or at least what he recommended. Well, we arrived at the urology ward and went up to the receptionists. "Hi, I've come in for my op" I said. Then added to comic effect "but wondered if there was any chance of being upgraded?" See, you can tell I wasn't nervous, I was cracking jokes already! Onwards we walked to the nurses station to be booked in. "Yep, it's me, I'm back" I say with a smile. It was only a few weeks since I was last in and the staff were all familiar faces who even came with some remembered names. "Sorry, we haven't got a bed for you yet, can you wait in the day room?" My celebrity status (all in the own mind perhaps) wasn't getting me special treatment today. Never mind. I'm not in any rush. I just had to accept the fact that this great medical team was also there for other people and not just me. I have to admit to getting selfish about my cancer, my medical team and my family and friends support group. For a few weeks it had been all about me in my head. Now I was just one of many in the ward that day. All with stories to tell. Some sad, some not but some very sad. But my importance in life had a shining light shone on it with but a short time. I had been found a bed and a doctor had been tasked to put in a cannula. My task in this? To be a guinea pig for one of the new intake of junior doctors. WARNING WARNING WARNING They are not very good at it yet and they hurt - lots! Three attempts and she just about managed a bad version where the extracted blood flowed like the sap from a tree. I hope this was all going to get better... The afternoon and evening dragged on as I got to know the other people in my bay but for some reason I just wasn't really interested in them. I was polite but must have been seen as slightly withdrawn. The quiet one in the corner. Yep, me, quiet! Then later my consultant/surgeon came to see me so that I could sign the consent forms. I signed them. I didn't read them. I could have been signing away the family jewels but I didn't care. I was on autopilot. The conveyor belt had started rolling. Zero hour did approach. I know, I'm being dramatic again but it's the truth. It's how I felt. Morning arrived and I was just hours away. Between 8 and 8.30 I should go down. Go down? What a positive phrase! You know, you can twist the negative into anything when your scared and I was doing just that. I know there was no reason to be scared. In medical terms a simple operation, not as if it was a heart transplant or anything to do with the major organs. Lets face it I was just having one cut out and my body being prepared for a life without it. Risks? Very very few. Reality: shit scared and proud of it! How can such a short time feel like forever? Between waking up and "going down" was only going to be a couple of hours and that would be filled with the setting up of my "sliding scale" etc. T and Phil arrived just before 8 to give me their final hugs and best wishes. Thanks you two - much appreciated. And then they made me walk down to theatre!! No dramatic bed screen or even wheelchair. Just me following a nurse with stand in hand as I made my final journey "down there". I said goodbye to T and Phil outside the theatre doors. Followed the nurse in and we walked down to the last theatre on the left. Same team as last time. Lots of things happening. Chatting to them. Epidural being put in. No probs. No pain. Chatting. Sleep. Wake up. And I'm in the dungeon. Or the ITU as they call it. And I'm in a high dependency bed. Although I can't see any of it I know I'm hooked up to the world's supply of gadgets and medical treatments. People are nice to me. I have no idea of the day or time. I presume I'm still in the same hospital. I feel that I'm alive. certainly no tunnel of light that I find myself walking towards. I doze. I wake. T and Phil visit. We chat. I think. I talk about stupid things. Well I think I do. I lie there for ever. Not really sleeping. Not really being awake. I chat to the nurses. I have at least one with me at all times. You're never alone with a Strand or after a major op. I doze. Staff change. They record my vitals every thirty seconds (well it feels like that often) They ask me to judge my pain from 0 to 10. I think I say 1 or 2 most times. Sometimes I could say 0 but that sounds like it's the wrong answer. I doze. It's sometime the next day. Friday if I remember rightly. Must be in the morning. Doctors rounds. They talk about me. I don't join in. I can go back to the ward when they have a bed for me. Sounds good. Well I think it sounds good. By the end of the day, 5.30pm to be more accurate it did sound good as I was on my way back to the ward. ITU had no windows. No daylight. No sense of day or night. I now felt more human. My brain had started to work normally again (normally!!). Hey folks, I had survived the surgery and I was out of intensive care. Yay! More tomorrow folks when I explain the Ring of Fire ;-) Andrew