So my lovely Bloglets,
This week I experienced something for the first time, and
all the medical staff I spoke to were rather surprised that I have hit the
grand old age of thirty and have never had one.
Probably because of my healthy history.
Is a general anaesthetic.
I arrived at Kings College Hospital on Denmark hill at about
6.20am with my mother to go to the day surgery unit to have a LLETZ (not a cone
biopsy as previously thought and what I
talked about in my last JTV Cancer Support video blog https://jtvcancersupport.com/2015/04/a-phone-call/). And for those of you who don’t think I’m capable
of getting up before 10.30am I was up at 4am.
LLETZ stands for Large Loop Excision of the Transformation Zone. So,
what is a LLETZ? And for those of you who are squeamish maybe don’t read this
bit. It’s a heated wire that cuts the
tissue and cauterises it as it goes so it stops the bleeding as it
happens. Think of a cheese wire that’s
hot. Nice. You ARE welcome.
I was a little bit apprehensive of the general anaesthetic as
I’ve never had one before and a thought did flit across my mind of, will I wake
up? But clearly I did. The staff were really wonderful and I was
amazed that the doctor who carried out the procedure and their assistant were
female AND that they came to talk to me before I had the procedure carried
out. My only experience of anything
vaguely like this before is when I had eggs harvested, by a man, who I have
never met before and introduced himself just before the sedation kicked in and
he inserted whatever he did into me to start the egg harvesting. Not very patient friendly, but I suppose that
was nearly 8 years ago – a lot has changed with the patient voice and patient
focus since then. Anyways, she was
really really lovely. The only thing
which had slight alarm bells ringing was when she asked me why I was having a
general and not a local and it’s normally done under local. I of course had no idea, but then the letter
was found in my notes to say why.
Afterwards the doctor said it was a good thing as they had to remove a
lot, more than they thought of my cervix.
Not only in terms of surface area but they also went down 14mm which
means that when I am pregnant (fingers crossed) I will need a stich put in to
keep my cervix shut and the baby in the womb.
This doesn’t worry me as I know it’s a pretty common thing and I know
women who have had it done and had healthy babies.
That bad things from that day. General anaesthetic makes me really sick and
I fucking hate feeling sick and being sick.
I was offered a cup of tea and a sandwich when I came around – no thanks. The nurse then offered me cold or warm water
which I thought was really good of her as warm water is less of a shock to the
system, so I said yes to warm water. I
sipped it really slowly as I was feeling a bit sick, felt better and then worse
and was then sick. And felt better so
was offered more water and a couple of biscuits which I drank and ate really
slowly. Felt better, looked over the
ward and was very jealous to see a woman drinking tea, eating a sandwich, and
was then very sick. I was told I could
leave and felt like shit in the car, went to sleep and felt better by about
3pm. I took an hour to eat 3 table
spoons of yoghurt at home which the doctor advised when I told her how sick I
felt and I managed to keep it down.
I don’t know how long I was out for. The procedure only took about 15 minutes. I don’t know what time I went into theatre,
around 8.15 or 8.30 I think and then next thing I know is that it’s 10.30. I’m still not 100% and yesterday was my first
day of being able to eat properly again.
Annoyingly I don’t feel nice and thin after not eating properly since
Wednesday as I didn’t feel 100% then.
Anyways. Another bad thing, the anaesthetist
who told me his assistant had the magic touch with inserting cannulas and I
wouldn’t feel a thing lied. It fucking
hurt. And I have had those before and
put it more painlessly. So that was
joyous. The bruise has nearly gone. And my throat hurts from the tube. Whinge whinge whinge.
So that was my fun few hours in King’s College Hospital on
Thursday.
BUT on the plus side, no pain whatsoever from the procedure
itself, thank fuck for my superhuman power of a stupidly high pain threshold. I am taking it really easy though as
advised. Basically been on the sofa or
in bed. No exercise for a week, strict
instructions on that as they don’t want any heavy bleeding to happen or
infections as that could mean going back to hospital for re-cauterisation and
antibiotics etc. I don’t want that, and
I am a very compliant patient. Chronic
fatigue helps with the whole not doing anything anyways.
Results in about a month.
Normal hospital on Tuesday so will be back after that no
doubt. Also need to so a charity blog
about the stuff I’ve been doing recently.
With love and hope,
XXX
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