Wednesday 10th April 2013. Soon my emotional outburst (see previous entry) is efficiently dealt with, tears are dried and I am put back in bed. At one point I spot one of the young male doctors looking after me nervously looking in from the doorway. He seems to decide this is a job for the nurses and rapidly makes his escape. They soon have me laughing and joking, and before I know it I'm chilling out to my favourite music on the MP3 player and practising my yoga breathing exercises. I even manage to get myself so calm that I fall asleep for the rest of the morning.
Early afternoon comes, the senior people on my team turn up and ask me how I am. Fine I say, I had a little wobble earlier but the nurses were wonderful. Let's go and get this cancer cut out! I'm wheeled down to theatre and the next thing I know it's late evening and I am waking up in the recovery room.
I tentatively have a good look around and all seems well. I am very tired but I don't feel like I've had a 5 hour operation. I can see I'm connected up to a drip, a catheter, and a drain. I have a look at my readings on the monitor, I look pretty stable. I can talk OK, I can swallow fine, nothing hurts. My nurse seems happy enough and later we are off to a ward. She helps me with a bit of unpacking and I persuade her to help me out to the bathroom so I can have a freshen up. What I really want is a good look in a mirror. I am very pleased to see minimal bruising, far less than when I had my tonsils out. Hardly any swelling. Just an extremely long Y shaped incision! I had been warned about this, but there are far more staples and stiches than I realised. But it will heal. I go back to bed and ring my husband and tell him everything is fine. He is extremely relieved to hear my voice. We both had completely underestimated how long I was going to be in theatre and recovery. I can see from the increasingly frantic texts he has been sending all afternoon and evening that he's had a far worse experience than I have and I wish he was here.
