Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Depolyped

Well, another box ticked and always an eventful visit to the local hospital. Lots of forms i can't read to be signed and paper clothes to wear. I wanted to stay with N who saw me to the lift with the porter but I managed to leave with a brave face and I was relieved to be able to wear my own clothes as far as the theatre. I met Dr P in the lift so felt happy that I was on my way for the right procedure. I didn't expect Dr S to grace me, a mere patient and a female one too, with his presence.

After a bumpy ride in a trolley to the anaesthetic room I was moved from side to side by staff preparing theatre next store. 'Someone' gave me some an injection of local (which stings) to dull  the pain of the cannulae (drip needle), sort of defeated the purpose but anyway it seemed that 'a little sleepy medicine' was an understantement. Good old Dr S, I should have asked Dr P for a proper explanation. I started to breath oxygen via an anaesthetic mask but at that point I thought 'oh well so this is a GA', in went some Fentanyl, Dr P muttered some broken English sentiments about happy dreams and off I went. Somewhere lovely and very vivid that disappeared as I heard my name called (shouted) and out came the airway and all I could taste was anaesthetic gas.

I now feel like I've smoked 40 Marlboro reds with the filters ripped off on a 48 hour bender. Rough. The recovery was ridiculous. N was told to wait on the floor above so he lost me for 2 hours. They wanted to keep me for 4 hours and made me wait 2 hours before drinking water. If that goes down OK then it's tea with 3 sugars and wait another hour. I had to beg to leave as N had a flight to catch and I couldn't leave alone. I sneaked off to the bathroom and fed my drip through my clothes, did my hair and drank my tea in one gulp and rang the buzzer. The Nurse was not happy as I had jumped the water to tea stage and spoilt the order. Eventually we escaped. If the NHS post recovery time was the same they would have to cut theatre lists by 70%. I like the relaxed approach but think the time would be better spent preparing pre op info like telling patients to be nil by mouth etc and what to expect afterwards.

Glad that's done. I feel v rough with throbbing head and cannulae site but absolutely no pain from op site so there you go. It took 45 mins and the polyp (just one) has been sent to hystology. Results next week.

3 comments:

  1. It's surprising how long they want you to stay in hospital after procedures compared to the UK, isn't it? Before my lap/hyst, they said I might have to stay in for 2-3 nights!.. in the end I went home the same day, which I think is the norm for the NHS. Glad it went smoothly though sorry you're feeling rotten.. hope you feel better soon xx

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  2. I'm glad it went well for you. Hope you feel better today!

    I have no previous experience but I thought they let me go rather quick after the surgery yesterday. All in all I was at the hospital for about 5hours. With a signature from my partner that he would stay with me for the next 24hours.

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  3. Hope you feel better soon x x x

    Maybe it's a Hispanic thing because I basically begged to be let out of the hospital in Spain because it was really noisy at night and I couldn't sleep and although they wanted me to stay another night they let me go, and pretty quick once they decided to. Maybe it helped that we only lived half a kilometre from the hospital.

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