So Little My got up early and tried out her new shiny thing from her bruv… a sat nav and drove to the shiny new hospital somewhere in the middle of some unpronounceable middle of nowhere place in Wales. Oooh shiny hospital… all single ensuite rooms instead of wards and shiny corridors etc. Very empty.
Got to the shiny weirdly colour coordinated waiting room of orange and grey... and only me and an old couple in the corner… oh not have long to wait then thinks LM.
“Little My to sub-waiting area 2 please” shouts the tannoy and your name comes up on the telly too OOOH! THere's posh!
Ah, it’s like those roller coaster queues that they hide round the corner so you don’t realise how long you have to wait…
So, off to Sub shiny waiting room and nice nurses waiting to weigh you. What is their obsession with weighing you??? Anyway, I must be the only person in the country to have magically lost weight over Christmas… or Its just their scales are different from GC’s! So 1 kg lighter than Friday… sit down to wait. I didn’t sleep well last night and then drifted into weird dream territory just before I had to wake up. So I was pretty tired and wished I could have a nap. Sat with eyes closed thinking that it would be nice to have the op here, even if no one could come and visit cos it’s in the middle of bleedin nowhere….
Saw a dippy looking registrar standing in the corridor who didn’t really look like he knew what he was doing reading notes and passing people onto SC. Hoped I didn’t get him cos I thought he would just say Oh I don’t know…
Eventually get called in and its SC. Ooooh haven’t seen you in ages he says (He was the one who gave me my diagnosis) You’re doing really well (hoorah!) He read my notes and I tried to read them upside down cos I’m nosy like that. I like SC cos he doesn’t patronise you and he uses big words and tells you what’s what.
So he says that GC says I am doing well, and he reckons I have a lot of stenosis and maybe baggy can’t be reversed. He says they are wimps and don’t know what they are on about and he thinks he can do it. He said ‘we used to call them burners’ cos they just burn your tumours off! And to think that GC is so complimentary about him haha.
We can leave baggy as it is, convert it to an end one, repair the prolapse or reverse it and see what happens… i.e. whether you shit yourself or not. What do you fancy? Oooh choices, choices!
I have discovered a scale of Drs and how ‘OUCH sorry’ they are or not. FC is gentle and almost doesn’t dare and asks if you are ok constantly. GC does dare and says sorry but is quite gently. SC just makes you scream and doesn’t say sorry! The nurse asked if I was ok, he just rammed his finger up there and said, there… that’s dilated enough now to get my finger up there… that’s all you need!
Oh really? Squeaked Little My…. Biting holes in the couch again…
So, he recommends that I try and get the bag reversed. If I am then shitting myself, he’ll give me a new bag and a better stoma that won’t prolapse and won’t leak poo. He’ll do a bit of ‘stretching’ too while doing the op… I don’t want to know how thank you very much! I’ll be asleep and that’s all I care about! So we didn't actually talk balloons- sorry you lot, no big puns to be had.
He did say that the damage I have is quite a lot and it will probably get worse over the years as the radiation can cause the tissue to start to thin and grow new blood vessels and that can cause colitis and bleeding and other nasty things and I may end up needing a bag again in the future… but this way I should get a good few years at least bagless. They don’t tell you all this at the time, do they?
So, why not I guess. He’ll dilate things a bit when he does the operation and he thinks that will do the trick. (so I don’t have to go ballooning beforehand.. phew!)
He said that cos of the way the wound is, they have to leave it open after the op and allow it to heal over itself.. something to do with not being clean or something and that involves having daily dressing changes for 6 weeks afterwards!! 4-5 days in hospital for the op or longer if I don’t do a poo… That made me laugh that they won’t let you go home until you have done a poo… wish hotels did that- pre-hefty I could have stayed in for weeks! As I am at the moment, I will be in hospital for about 2 minutes!
OK, I’ll book you in he says. Do I have any choice of when? Asks LM hopefully….
Oh go on then, he says . January was pretty much booked up he thought and then proceeded to tell me all the ops he had to do and how many a week he does and blah blah (my god this man can talk the hind leg off a donkey!) , February I am taking my class on a trip and have this course thing in Canterbury so I plumped for mid March so I can have the Easter Holidays to recover too. If I do it all in term time, I will be worrying about going back possibly earlier than I should so this way, I get 2 weeks off and then 3 weeks hols to recover. Plus they have booked a teacher for 3 weeks in March to cover some of my lessons too. He said March it is, I’ll get the secretary to book you in and he wrote on it Do not cancel!!!! Hahaaa Get in! I think I am very very lucky with my doctors. They are both very helpful and nice.
Then It’s see if you shit yourself or not! If not, all is ok for a few years at least. If I do, then back in to have another permanent one done. Hmmm. Was hoping they would be able to tell a little bit more before hand but hey ho. Don’t want to stay as I am so I guess it’s worth a gamble of one op or two.
He then blabbed on and on about chemistry and his medical training and how rubbish all the new doctors are now cos they don’t get the training and you can’t even leave them to do an appendectomy on their own and how few hours they work compared to what he did in his day and all about radiologists and breast cancer and had I ever seen a boob years later, cos that was what my bum would look like... eh???? what??? and what he got for his A levels and what board of exams he did and what college he went to and and and blah blah blah!!!
Blimey… felt sorry for the woman after me cos she was kept waiting ages!
Oh and the op is in the other old hospital and not the shiny new one. Still, ems lives down the road so she might come and visit if she’s not off having her stem cell at the same time! P doesn't drive and all my friends live quite far north of me so I don't get many visitors when in... don't mind actually really but it'll be niice if ems comes along :)
The nurse gave me a head tilt when he told her I had cancer… guess most of the others there are just there for other bowel conditions. Different to the cancer hospital. (well, durr LM of course it is!) We had a joke that I got a bag from him for my birthday last year, so this year, I get a Dyson (Tim’s awful pun of bagless) He seemed to think if made it to a year without it coming back, there was a pretty good chance it wouldn’t… so fingers crossed eh? Half way there!
Anyway, then went into Abergavenny and met Odin for lunch!!!! He had saddled up Sleipnir for his x ray. Ems was also in the other hospital having her R stuff or she could have joined us too.
So Little My had lunch with Odin the Allfather aka Colin. It was lovely to meet him (but a bit weird same as when meeting ems for the first time) I wasn’t blond and he wasn’t 7ft tall… hahaaaa BUT he did give me chocklit and a little shiny thing too Yay!Noce to have me you, Odin. How cool to have met 2 of warped and how weird that some of us actually live near enough to each other to meet… Ooooh who’s next??? haha.
And back home. Going to take Max home tomorrow morning and stay in our swanky hotel for the night Get In!!!!! Might sneak a photo of it to make you all jealous! Or, I’ll find the name so you can look on the internet.
Hilary, I will wave at the sea for you as I drive past it.
I think I wrote something soppy on my last blog that got attacked by the moderators… anyway, thanks all you lovely lot for your support and love this year. For someone who doesn’t have much of a family, you are bloody wonderful!
Bernard the Brandy carrying St Bernard is trawling up and down the blog with reviving Brandy for you. Help yourselves.
Little My xxx
