Nurse, I really don’t think I should have this operation
You know when your cold goes from an annoying sniff to a going-to-need-a-day-off type of cold? You must do. Everyone who has ever blown their nose has had a look in the tissue afterwards. If you haven’t, then you are missing out (and probably lying). Anyway, when things go a bit ‘technicolour’ in that tissue, it’s probably time for a day off.
The reason I’m going on about snot is because the first time I went to the hospital for my surgery, I felt awful. The day before, I had told my surgeons that I felt like I had an infection. They looked at me sceptically and one of them said “You don’t really want this operation, do you?” Of course, they were right, I didn’t want it but I really did feel like crap. They took some blood to see if I was faking. That’s not exactly what they said but it was fairly obvious what was happening. One of the surgeons (he’s friendly and wears a selection of pretty bow ties so I forgive him) actually said “You’re going to feel pretty awful after the operation to be honest, a cold is going to be the least of your worries.” Thanks for that. Still, surgeons’ suspicions aside. I was producing multicoloured gunk at quite an alarming rate so I was keen to check if I was up to having the operation. I was advised to turn up the next day for the operation as planned, have no breakfast or water (I really hate being thirsty) and go from there.
The next day, I was wearing my standard-issue hospital gown and stockings waiting to have one last meeting with the surgeons and blowing my nose into an increasingly soggy bundle of tissues. When my surgeon came up (no bow tie with his scrubs, I was disappointed) I asked him about the blood tests. He hadn’t checked them yet, probably because he thought I was just trying to get out of the operation. So, off he goes to check the results…
Five minutes later he comes back “Ah, well, there are two options…” I did have an infection. I could go ahead with the operation with an increased, but small, risk of complications or postpone a week. For some people, gearing up to have an operation, travelling to the hospital, all the palaver that this entails is enough to run the risk of a worse outcome. Not me, I postponed the hell out of there.
That afternoon, my husband and I went for lunch (we had babysitting all set for the day and we weren’t about to waste it), I bought some jazzy daps (plimsoles to those of you not from Wales or the West Country), and a week later we were back in the hospital. It was nice to have some last minute bonus time to get my shit (literally and figuratively) together.
So, I’m back in my gown, paper undies and funny socks, waiting for whatever comes next as I hadn’t made it past this stage last time. I’m still thirsty. You wait in a curtained cubicle with a chair and a call button for the nurse. I don’t know what you could need that requires a call button at this stage as the nurses are the other side of the curtain, but it’s there. It’s the sexiest looking nurse on the call button. Very Jean-Paul Gaultier meets nun-nurse. Three male surgeons come in and draw on my chest with a marker pen while a female chaperone watches. The second surgeon doesn’t like the lines the first one draws. He tuts, redraws some line and writes some numbers on my collarbone. I think it’s just a convenient place for him to make notes, to be honest. Like leaving a post-it with useful phone numbers on the monitor of your work computer. I later found out that a lot of the lines are there just so that they know how to put you back together in the right place once they’ve cut you open and cut bits off. They draw an arrow on my right arm to remind them (I kid you not, this is the best technique they’ve come up with) that this arm is the one that needs lymph nodes removed so that they can triple check my cancer hasn’t spread past my breast. It’s weird but, as important as this operation is to me, it’s abundantly clear that this is just their day job. Don’t get me wrong, the surgeons are certainly not complacent, but they’re just getting on with it. Like when you make a lasagne that you’ve made fifteen times before. Yes, you’ve got to make the bechamel and the bolognese at the same time, and layer the whole thing, while doing the dishes in between if you don’t want the kitchen to look like a crime scene by the end, but it’s just one step after another. I was told by the surgeons that I wouldn’t even need any extra blood during the surgery as you don’t bleed that much. So even the operating theatre wouldn’t look like a crime scene, and there’d be assistants to do their cleaning up.
The chaperone looks a bit bored at this stage, but she stayed. It was very strange to have her there, given that I was about to trust these men with cutting off parts of my body while I was unconscious, and yet it was nice that someone had thought about what might make me feel more comfortable.
I put my little case of clothes (mostly zip up sports bras I’ve been told to bring and big shirts — basically clothes that don’t go over my head) in a locker and went to wait in an empty part of the recovery room. I was told I’d wake up back there after the operation. It’s quiet, but airless, and there’s a big fan swinging back and forth to remind you time is actually passing.
A surgical nurse came to collect me and I kissed my husband goodbye before being led into a small, pretty average looking nurse’s room with a hospital bed in it. The nurse is talking a lot but I’m not really listening as I hoik (a hoik is somewhere between a pull and a jump. I’m short and hospital beds are high) myself up onto the bed. I don’t think I was afraid, just a bit weirded out that it was actually, finally, happening. I was asked to lie down while the anaesthetist came in to put a line in my arm. I think anaesthetists are paid a sizeable amount of money but he was pretty rubbish at putting the line in compared to the nurses in chemotherapy, and I’m pretty sure those nurses get paid a lot less. Anyway, he made a hilarious joke (note: it was not hilarious) about anaesthetic and gin and tonics and then asked me to count to ten. I was a bit distracted by the fact that the anaesthetic was really painful as it went into my arm. I was telling them my arm hurt around about 3 and then I thought “This anaesthetic isn’t working” and then I passed out. You’re probably not supposed to say ‘passed out’ as it doesn’t do justice to the controlled (and highly-paid) work of the anaesthetist. I suppose that’s why no-one has designed a way to make it not hurt though, because you’re unconscious pretty soon after, and less able to complain. Maybe I counted as far as four.
I woke up, asking the nurses if my husband was still waiting, where my daughter was, was my husband still waiting, was the operation done and was my husband still waiting. The nurses dressed me in one of the restrictive bras I’d brought and told me to go back to sleep.
Over the next few hours I vaguely remember drinking lots of sweet tea, mumbling at people through the morphine and the anaesthetic, my husband telling me to rest, my mother telling me I looked terrible and vomiting lots of sweet tea back up. The anaesthetic makes you sick afterwards, which they understandably gloss over beforehand. I’d fasted before the operation so it wasn’t actually that bad as there was nothing in my stomach to really be sick with. It reminded me a bit of when I was in labour with our daughter. I was sick a ‘frightening amount’ then (according to the midwife) and in and out of consciousness then, too.
Anyway, immediate post-operative recovery is a bit blurry. I remember being in too much pain to press the controls on the bed that should make you more comfortable. I remember thinking that I could really use a chopstick to help me press the buttons. I remember being really thirsty. I remember thinking “I’m so glad I didn’t have this operation last week.” I remember thinking “Oh my god, this really hurts.” And then I fell back asleep.
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