Operation Day

Recounting this day is hard. I think my mind has naturally shut alot of it out and picking out the recollections is something of a challenge, so please bear with me. I made a deal with myself that I would write down and record every moment of my recovery process but I didn’t include the instances before Surgery, and just after I wasn’t in the most compos-mentis of states to actively write down more than a few scrabbled sentences. Even writing now, with a good and healthy distance of time between, it still involves having to peer through some very thick psycho-fog to pull out just the most significant details from that day while still maintaining some mental composure. It was the day where I truly believed I was going to die, or wake up to some lesser life that I would forever resent.

When I woke up that morning, I felt very little emotion as I had to put my very swiftest autopilot into gear to get myself out of the door. There wasn’t really time for any thoughts. I was just about able to throw on some clothes, make sure my last few bits were packed and my last 2 Pre Op Cocktails had been chugged before the intercom buzzed and the Car-bulance was here. At least this time I was able to take David with me. When I had gone in for my first surgery in December I had made this same journey alone.

At the last minute I had been told that I would have to show up at a different place, so true to form when we reached the Hospital we spent a good chunk of time getting completely and utterly lost, being given directions to go one way on top of directions to go another, until we ended up ridiculously confused, wandering through some vacant corridors that reminded me alot of the kinds of places I used to sneak around taking photos in, before somehow ending up outside on a road heading down into a car park and nowhere near anywhere we were supposed to be. David went and retraced a few steps to the nearest door to ask for yet more directions but I lingered back, feeling like all of this getting lost was some kind of omen trying to keep me away from having the surgery altogether and I dropped onto a kerb along the road and froze. I didn’t know where David had gone, where I was supposed to be, whether I was late or not, but didn’t care all that much. I couldn’t be touched with knives or scalpels out here. But David did come back. He led me to a door in the side of the building and I had to give my dead-name and paperwork and then was sent to a cubicle to wait. I sat there expecting it to be like the last time where I was left sitting for hours, contemplating what was going to happen to me and each hour being more anxious than the last. It wasn’t how it turned out this time. I had been in that cubicle for as little as five minutes by the time I was met by my team; my surgeon Mr. Ansell, my Colorectal Nurse Angel and my new Stoma Nurse Tracey. I was given the details and told I was the first to go in, and not be required to wait like last time. I was asked to go through the paperwork but by that time I had broken down. I told them I didn’t want it. I told them, in fact, most of what I have shared with you all in these posts on here over all of those tender Post-Diagnosis, Pre-Op weeks.

They gave me a choice.

They told me I could choose not to have the surgery. They told me that I could leave and go home right there and then, on the condition that I would have to commit to regular and penetrative check ups every three months, to monitor where the Xenomorph had been removed and to see if it came back. It carried the risk that if it did come back, it could be much more serious, faster growing, and possibly inoperable. Inoperable would have meant terminal. A long process but ultimately a death sentence. And one that I had chosen.

I cannot reiterate just how close I came.

But I stayed in that cubicle. I had come all this way. All that time spent forcing myself to come to terms with surgery being the only viable option. I chose between the anxiety of not knowing how much this surgery was going to impact on my life – all of those things I wrote in my past posts – and the Anxiety of not knowing whether an aggressive Cancer had returned, the Anxiety of every test result every three months, the discomfort of the tests themselves and the awful preparation process that I had gone through back in October that made me more sick than the actual Cancer itself. I told them to get on with it and get it over with. They told me I was making the wisest choice, whatever the outcome.

I was left with Tracey the Stoma Nurse to mark me up for where my new Stoma was going to placed. She looked at where my trouser waist band was sitting, not that it was the best indicator as I was wearing loose yoga pants that sat much higher up my waist than my usual jeans and leggings, and far higher than any underwear I owned. She then asked me to go to the loo for a urine sample where I took the pic below, huge belly exposed, face unmade and blotchy from tears, the last photo ever taken of me pre-Stoma.

I returned to the cubicle with the sample and changed to my hospital gown, removed my jewellery and packed up everything, leaving just my engagement ring and Forget-me-not ring, I needed at least something of David’s presence to go with me this time. I was asked to don my hospital face mask, lie down and I was whisked away, corridor after corridor whizzing by, to the department marked surgical theatre. The cannula they put into the back of my left hand I remember was excruciating this time and it was in at a strange angle. The anaesthetist was admiring my Chernobyl Tattoo and he asked me to talk about Chernobyl as he administered the jabs. I asked him to “kiss my ass goodbye” before I drifted out of consciousness. I barely had time to feel afraid that I might not wake up.

And wake up I did. Unlike last time, this time I didn’t even know what time of day it was. I don’t even recall asking. I don’t even remember if it was light or dark outside. I was all a tangle of limbs and wires. It felt like every inch of me was hooked up to something or other. I felt in more discomfort than pain at that point and we still bewildered to have woken up. The pain in my throat I had been dreading wasn’t there. I took the photo below and posted it somewhere online to show my friends I was somehow still alive, before peeling down the sheets to get my first glimpse of my new addition, my new Stoma in its clear bag. Unlike how I expected, I was in a room by myself. The name over my bed was Kurona. There was a telly on the wall and a table with a jug of water, which I eagerly drank. I wasn’t on a shared Ward with others like I was at Christmas. I felt relieved that the sounds of hustle and bustle and chatter might be one less thing to affect my sleep, asked the nurse attending my machines to pass me Daenerys the white Fluffy dragon, and after that thought I remember very little else of that day.

The “worst” may not have entirely been behind me at that stage, but I could rest assured that I was through the biggest period of danger, and now I had to put my faith in my team, the Nurses of my Ward, the strength of my own body and dare I mention my own mind, to push through what lay ahead.