8. Ducks, Loaves of Bread and Pickled Onions
It's eight days before Christmas, tomorrow they will operate and the consultant had already told me that the 4 and 5th days tend to be the worst. With any luck I will be fine to have Christmas Dinner on the 6th day after surgery.
If you are new to this exciting and entertaining ramble about a middle aged mans health issues, alright alright, can we agree on late middle aged, then you won't have a clue what I'm wittering on about and might want to go back and catch up. Sorry, Ocean, the sentence length insists on growing beyond what is reasonable.
Right, where was I, sentence length, no, wittering...hmm maybe, but no I think I was about to describe what parts of me the lovely cancer team had decided to remove from the vicinity of my mouth and throat. When I was first told that the cancer was a tumour that was hiding under my left tonsil this had seemed tolerably good news. Having your tonsils removed is a routine operation it was routinely done on small children for fucks sake, back in the fifties it was apparently done in the doctors surgery with a couple of sharpened spoons.
However when I was told about the tonsillectomy they also shuffled me off to the dentist who insisted they remove a couple of teeth as well, why I hear you ask, well the reasons are multifarious and almost all horrific. One of the reasons is osteoradionecrosis of the jaw, what the actual fuck I hear you exclaim, and well you might. Long story short, radiotherapy reduces bloodflow and a side effect could be your jaw bone dying. They want to remove any teeth that may get infected. So I wasn't just being operated on by sharpened spoons but having two wisdom teeth removed one of which would entail shaving some bone in order to get it out.
Well anyway to cut to the chase all this was now about to happen tomorrow morning at 0700 no less.
As a side note, just to add to everything else I have type two diabetes and over the last six months it went a bit haywire and I've had to check my blood sugar regularly. They changed my meds and the diabetes nurse has been quite severe about what I need to do if my blood sugar numbers drop below 5.0, I have been told in no uncertain terms that if this happens I am to eat something containing sugar, what the actual fuck, I've been assiduously avoiding sugar for the last 14 years.
What I haven't been doing is checking my blood sugar, I've just finished the dough for one loaf for said grandson and one for us and both are now set to rise and I have time for a cup of tea. Make the tea and whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, check the blood sugar, fuck me sideways it's 4.4 mmol. According to my very severe nurse I am about to slip into hypoglycaemic shock. Don't worry, this is extraordinarily good news, it means I can have a triple chocolate M & S cookie with my cup of tea. Right this very minute, as I write this sentence, I am sitting in my accustomed position in the kitchen listening to Noah Kahan on the speaker and eating a cookie, life basically does not get any better.
Back to the the job in hand, there are three loaves rising, three jars of pickled onions done and I am now knackered so writing it is
The next morning, keep up, we are back before Christmas, ducks and loaves of bread and pickled onions are merely a future fever dream, so the next morning Helen and I arose from our beds at a quite unseemly five am. I had to make sure that any part of my bod that was going to be exposed to view had been properly washed and deodorant applied etc. The only thing that marred this was watching Helen eat breakfast which, of course, was verboten, nil by mouth for six hours before any knife was applied.
Helen dropped me off at the main entrance of the Bristol Royal Infirmary and I wandered in somewhat disconsolately and promptly went the wrong way, took the wrong lift to the wrong floor and got out in some god forsaken back water of the hospital full of pipes and odd equipment with no sign of any further stairs or lifts to take me back to civilisation. It was the sort of place that the serial killer is chased into in a Netflix thriller. Back into the lift and return to where I came in, turns out that I will make this error many times in the next few weeks due to a terminal ability to stroll off in the wrong direction.
I made my way back to the main doors and took the right hand corridor that leads to lights, people and oddly WHSmith. I found my way to the correct set of lifts and set out for the sixth floor wherein lies the Pre Operative Department in the fabled room A606. I'd been there before for the disasterous pre-op. There was the same wait as before amongst a disparate group of the unhealthy, some of whom I vaguely recognised from the pre-op.
At seven o'clock we were all ushered into the reception area and waited in an untidy queue as a nurse/receptionist took our names and shunted us off to different waiting areas. I have had many operations over the last 40 odd years as you are no doubt fed up of me telling you. On each of these occasions over the last 20 years I have turned up at the hospital at much the same time of day, only to wait for hours for my turn to be called. On one such occasion I turned up at 5am and wasn't called for surgery until 5pm. This time I'd bought a hefty book and no expectations of anything other than waiting for several hours. My arse had barely hit the seat when a nurse turned up and called my name
"Charles Acheson-Crow?"
"That's me"
"Come with me"
I trotted behind the nurse who guided me to a another area practically bursting at the seams with scrubs clad teenagers. She gestured to a small cubicle, "Wait here, your anaesthetist will be along to talk to you soon, you are first on the list"
"Am I, be fucked", I think I just need to abandon any preconceptions about NHS waiting times and go with the flow.
I didn't have very long to wait before an extremely gorgeous blond haired woman dressed in pink scrubs entered the cubicle.
"Hi, I'll be your anaesthetist, I need to ask you some questions"
What followed was a long procession of people all asking the same questions
"What's your name, date of birth, height, weight, length of your willy" over and over again. Luckily so far no one had suggested that they wanted any blood.
Then a older chap wearing ordinary clothes turned up, the consultant for definite.
He asked all the same questions and asked what I expected would be done today
"You will be removing my tonsil and presumably the cancer underneath, and two wisdom teeth will be taken out"
"Ok good, you realise this is going to be very painful?", before I could reply, he gave me a nod and disappeared out of my life never to be seen again.
The next person to look in on me was the bubbly Australian nurse from the pre-op.
"Hi, I thought it was you" she said "I cooked that pheasant with chorizo"
"How was it?"
"Lovely, although I think I overcooked it", she smiled and also disappeared to never be seen again.
When I had first got the appointment for the operation I’d read that if possible you should take in a dressing gown. The night before I carefully checked all the documentation and there was no mention of dressing gowns anywhere. Ah well, it’s only day surgery, probably no need and it would take up nearly all the room in my backpack. I decided against. Right then one of the other patients emerged from his cubicle resplendent in a rather natty blue dressing gown, fuck.
And as if choreographed a nurse appeared with one of the splendid backless hospital gowns and told me,
“You need to put this on.", she passed me the gown, "Take everything off apart from your underpants. and you need to put these stockings on, make sure they cover your toes"
I must have looked slightly confused, "They are open at the bottom but they need to cover your toes, did you bring a dressing gown?”
"I didn't think I needed one", I replied dolefully.
"Never mind, I'll bring you another gown to cover the back", she replied.
I removed all my clothes and put the gown on, they aren't the easiest thing as they do up at the back and I kept doing the neck so tight that it was strangling me. Then came the delightful pressure stockings, which point blank refused to cooperate. It took me about ten minutes to get the bloody things on. then there was the struggle to get them to cover my toes. Can someone tell me why the fuck stockings that specifically have to cover your toes have an arsing hole right where your toes are. I feel it is my civic duty to point out that covering toes would be a lot easier if, for instance, they came without the hole. If only there was something they could base them on, you'd think they'd never seen a pair of socks.
I sat waiting, savouring the cool breeze over my nether regions and the beginnings of hypothermia in my toes.
The nurse returned with another gown which I promptly put on the wrong way round, so now I had two gowns, neither of which covered my arse.
"You'll need to put it on the other way round", said the nurse, and helped me put the second gown on the right way round.
"Follow me"
We set off down the corridor, I trailed the nurse carrying my Harley Davidson backpack and dressed in two hospital gowns, stockings and crocs. Looking good.
The nurse directed me into a small room with lockers and put the backpack and clothes into a locker.
"Wait here, someone will be along to get you"
Unfortunately, the room had no door and also had air conditioning, I was getting colder and colder as no one came along to get me. Under the window was what looked like some sort of radiator, I shuffled over and it was indeed a radiator. I sat with one hand then the other on the radiator trying to warm up. Eventually a nurse turned up and I was ushered further down the corridor and into the operating theatre.
It was awash with very young people in scrubs, including the anaesthetist from earlier. I was laid out on the bed like a rather too animated corpse.
"I'll just pop a cannula in the back of your hand"
Urk, this is my most unfavourite part of the proceedings, however the anaethetist knew exactly what she was doing and I hardly felt a thing.
"Can you bring that line a bit closer", she asked one of the nurses. The line however was tangled around the bottom of a cart with some torture instruments laid out on it and the nurse was having some difficulty in complying. Eventually the anaesthetic line was detangled from the cart.
"Could you flush it please"
The nurse connected up the cannula, "Is that OK, can you feel anything?", there was only a very slight sensation in the back of my hand.
"That's fine" I replied.
"OK, sleepy stuff going in now", a brief cold sensation and....consciousness departed.
I came to in the recovery room, a nurse was doing something to another patient in the bed next to me. She finished and came over and had a look at me.
"How are you feeling", she asked
"Fine", I replied, succinctly, at that moment I wasn't even sure what my name was let alone how I felt but I'm British and there is only one reply when asked how one is. I'm sure when Nelson had his arm blown off and was asked how he felt, he replied, "Fine"
The nurse obviously didn't believe me because she had a good squint at the monitor that I was attached to.
"Your sats are too low, you can't go out to the ward until they go up a bit. Take some deep breaths and hold them for a while"
I duly did as I was told and was gratified to see the oxygen saturation go up on the monitor, well this was fun, I spent some time watching my heart rate and seeing whether I could reduce it or make it increase. Completely forgetting about the oxygen saturation.
"You need to keep taking deep breaths", the nurse scolded me.
I abandoned playing with my heart rate and put my back into making the oxygen saturation increase, rather satisfyingly I managed to get it up to 97%.
"OK, that's good, we can move you to the ward"
I was slotted into a space in the ward next to a middle aged man with an impressive stomach, I am guessing it was some years since he had caught sight of his own toes. I idly wondered how he had got on with putting on the pressure stockings.
I do love an open ward, me. The opportunities for people watching are unparalleled. Unfortunately the anaesthetic was swiftly wearing off and I was becoming uncomfortably aware of my throat and mouth.
An older nurse came over and had a look at my monitor, "Your oxygen sats are looking good now, do you need any pain killers"
"It doesn't hurt much at the moment"
"You need to get them on board before you really need them, what would you like?"
"Hmm what have you got?"
"Morphine, tramadol, codeine, paracetamol or ibuprofen"
"Not sure I need morphine and I'll avoid the tramadol, how about codeine and paracetamol?"
"Coming right up"
She went off and procured my prescription pain killers and bought them over with a glass of water. This was the moment of truth, swallowing them was...interesting to say the least but down they went.
"Would you like something to eat", asked the nurse
"Not really" I replied
"We need to see you eating before we can let you go"
"What have you got?"
She came back with a whole list of different soft foods one of which was Weetabix, which I haven't had for years and years. "I'll go for the Weetabix, without sugar please"
Weetabix and milk was promptly delivered, unfortunately my throat was now complaining to me in no uncertain terms. I tried eating some of the Weetabix the taste of which was rather delightfully nostalgic however it got to the back of my throat and refused to go any further. I have to say that this is a rather effective curb to appetite. Normally I pretty much inhale my food at a rate that Helen says is positively indecent.
I ate a very small amount washed down with copious quantities of water and left the rest feeling a bit like a toddler who refuses his breakfast.
The general anaesthetic had pretty much worn off although the codeine was giving me a bit of a buzz and I was starting to take more of an interest in my surroundings. I fished around on the side of the bed until I managed to snaffle my backpack which was on a chair. I retrieved my phone and sent some messages to my nearest and dearest. Helen first, she was at the hairdressers and would be over later with Jo to pick me up, then Ocean and then Cath, my sister.
Cath hadn't seen the message the day before where I had wailed, "Argggh... they've moved the surgery, it's now tomorrow😭😱😦" so she had no idea that I was at the hospital.
"OMG I didn't see this yesterday I'm sorry it was Laura's birthday and we had a full on day. How did it go, you're probs still numb I'm guessing? Xx" was the reply
I spent a happy half an hour talking to everyone much to their surprise, and mine for that matter. Talking was slightly painful but nothing to write home about. Then, without warning, the codeine kicked in big time and before I knew it I was fast asleep.
When I woke up, it was nearly time for Helen to pick me up. I managed to get my clothes out of the back pack and spent a slightly frenetic 5 minutes trying to get everything on whilst still lying on the bed. God only knows why I didn't get out of bed and dress like a normal human being but hey ho.
I then strolled along the ward to the loo and in order to get a better look at my companions in suffering. We were, for the most part, middle aged and overweight. There was one man who was here from oncology and he was having a long conversation with the nurse about his cancer treatment. It sounded completely nightmarish but he was remarkably calm about it.
It wasn't long before Helen turned up and we were ushered by the older nurse into a side room for the discharge discussion.
There were all the standard warnings about not driving, cooking, signing any legal documents etc.
"The operation went very well, but I can't sugar coat it, your tonsil bed looks horrific right now. You are going to be in a considerable amount of pain. Make sure you take the painkillers regularly, not just when you feel you need them."
With this I was set free to rejoin the world, we wandered down to the main doors to await Jo and Kev and our lift back home.
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