Friday August 20th 2010
So here's the full low-down on my day in hospital. It's a bit endless, but it's meant to give those who come after the full monte - I'm not forcing you to read it, lol.
I wasn't particularly nervous about going in - I was just so desperate to get the procedure done, I seemed to have been waiting for ever, and I felt, rightly or wrongly, that the delays might be exposing me to unnecessary risks. Also I became paranoid that I would get some cold or flu that would stop them doing the general anaesthetic, so for the last two weeks I'd been suffering from one psychosomatic disorder after another.
Anyway Penny gave me a lift in, and we arrived as requested at 7:30. Can't say the initial experience was very reassuring. They arrange that you arrive just as the shifts are changing so we were "greeted" if that's the right word, by an extremely tired woman at the ward desk. I was going to say "I'm Jim Lawton, and etc etc," but before I could say anything, she yawned at me and said "Hiya, I'll just stick you in the day room". This room was absolutely appalling. It was about 4 metres on a side and had a few NHS plastic chairs down three of them. On the fourth side there was a broken table with an old televsion on it, and in front of that someone had chosen to park one of those cranes for lifting patients in an out of bed. There were no windows, no magazines, no posters. Nothing. I never gave my name, so if I'd been in the wrong ward it would have been all the same. Anyway we were left there for half an hour, and just as I was going to go and complain, in came the very efficient day-shift staff-nurse, and from then on everthing was super-efficient and more or less faultless.
She took me to a bed in a six-bed bay with two other chaps in it. The ward was perfectly pleasant, it was a general plastic surgery ward, not just melanomas. It had windows looking out onto some trees - and blessing of blessings theywere open!<span>. The staff-nurse</span> took all my details, in fact nearly everyone who came almost down to the cleaner seemed to take all my details - including when I had last done a poo. I was very quickly given a wrist band for each arm, and the surgeon arrived to look at my existing biopsy scar. He then drew a big arrow on my leg pointing at the scar . As soon as he had gone the anaesthetist came, asked me all the questions again, and said I could drink half a glass of plain water - I'd been fasting since midnight, and it was now about 8:30. The surgeon had said I would be last on the afternoon list - as it turned out I got moved forward so a more difficult case came last, but it was still a long time wiothout a drink.
As soon as the anaesthetist had gone, the charge-nurse came back to say I would be going to Nuclear-Medecine at 9:00 a.m., so Penny and I said our goodbyes, and I sat and read until yet another nurse came and told me the route to Nuclear Medicine. It was miles away - that's one massive hospital - it wasn't even in the same wing - I was in the Clarendon Wing on B floor, and the Nuclear Medicine place is in the Jubilee wing on floor E. Anyway I found it OK, and was quickly ushered into a very large room with a massive machine in it, and a single very pleasant young woman. Oh, this place had a very nice waiting area with magazines and a tank full of fish. Anyway, off with the trousers and she got me to lie on the bed in the machine, and then gave me four subcutaneous injections of nuclear material around the scar of the biopsy. They did sting a bit, but at least there, on the side of my knee, they weren't what I would call painful. Then as the lymph carried the nuclear stuff up my body, she took a whole load of photos - right up to the top of my chest (just in case, she said). The whole process took about an hour, and at the end she made two crosses on my groin (tickled a bit) where the nuclear stuff had found two sentinel nodes. Fortunately the nodes were "very superficial".
Then it was back to the ward - I managed to remember where it was :0). I suppose I could have gone and had a walk around, but I sat on the bed and read, and texted people, and listened to the radio. The best bit was when two prison warders came in with a lad on the end of a chain with his arm in a massive foam rubber sling, and the nurses put him in the bed next to mine. Never found out anything about him, and he was gone when I came back from surgery. At about 2 o'clock yet another nurse came and told me that they were "ready for me in theatre" and gave me one of those impossible hospital gowns to put on. From this point on everyone, including the porter who wheeled me to the theatre (back in the Jubilee Wing) asked my name and date of birth. That being wheeled around is very weird. There you are, a perfectly fit person being wheeled through the corridoors on a trolley, through all the visitors and passers-by.
If you've never had a general anaesthetic the next bit would be a bit intimidating. There's a kind of ante room where various people stick electrodes on your chest, an oxygen monitor on your finger, a blood-pressure cuff on your arm, and a needle in your other arm where they can administer the pre-meds and the anaesthetic. The room itself was a bit like a mad broom cupboard full of electronic gubbins and medicine all muddled up. Everyone was very jolly, and I wasn't particularly nervous. And then comes the moment when the anaesthetist comes in - and this is why you need never worry about being in an operating theatre. He squirts a couple of syringes into the line in your arm, and then says something like "this is the one that will put you to sleep", and he slowly depresses the plunger, and you look at him and he looks at you, and then CLICK all those people are gone, and you are iin a completely different room with a completely different set of people, and it's all over! (That's the recovery room by the way, in this case it was a bit ike the baggage reclaim of a small provincial airport). They give you a bit of time to get your bearings, and make sure you're breathing OK, and then the trolley is off back to the ward.
I have to say that last time I had a general I felt absolutey dreadful afterwards, and it took me a good few hours to sleep it off and then I had an astonishing headache, but that was eye surgery. This time, for whatever reason, I came back chirpy as a cricket. I now had a big plaster on my knee and another on my groin, and that was that. Penny was there to hold my hand, a tea lady gave me a sandwich and a cup of tea. The surgeon appeared again and said I was good to go so far as he was concerned and after about half an hour various people came to look at me, asked me all the usual questions, and eventually, around 5:30 said I could go home. They did give me a pack of strong pain killers but I never took them, a few paracetamols were all I needed.
That was last Friday. Saturday and Sunday I sat on the sofa mostly, with my foot up on some cushions. Had the cushions in bed too. I was OK staggering short distances with a straight leg. Now, on Tuesday I'm bending the knee slightly. The dressing gets changed or removed on Friday, and I expect to be back at work next week. That all seems pretty quick, I know, but surgery was on an area with plenty of loose skin, so I didn't need any flaps or donor skin, and the lymph nodes were in the vertical group at the top of my leg rather than deep in my abdomen, so I think I got off very lightly.
