TMI: It’s Tuesday!
This entry is for Tuesday, 3rd of February. For more details see the Introduction to Cancer Blogging. It involves surgery so you might want to skip it.
My Da has driven me in to hospital this morning. It’s unlikely I’ll be out in under three hours, and that’s a real pain with parking. Unfortunately he likes to be early for things. I’m supposed to be here for 7:30, so I’m actually here at 6:40 when there’s nothing to do but wait. I was waiting till after 8:30. We went through the pre-op checks. Then my Da did something really stupid. He asked how the operation would work. I spent yesterday evening searching for information already knew how it would work, Not only that I knew enough that I cherished my ignorance on the finer details. Males may wish to skip the next paragraph or even the whole post. An orchietomy doesn’t require you to cut into the scrotum. Instead you need to think about how the human body develops. The testes descend into the scrotum, so you can cut next to the penis and pull them back up through the same canal. I’ll accept it’s a very clever idea, and it’s probably the best way to do it, but a couple of hours before the operation I didn’t want to be think too much about tubes and other details.
Apart from been sliced, today was mainly about waiting. Waiting in the room for the consultant, waiting in another room to be taken to change into a gown which. Alarmingly it opened from the back. I know hospital gowns are supposed to, but at times like this when you’re worrying about whether or not the surgeon can tell left from right, they last thing you want is to add another about front or back. There was another long wait until an orderly came to take me to the anaesthetist. He passed the time as we walked over with a joke which sadly requires a poignant mime, so I can’t tell it here.
The anaesthetic was local or local-ish. It was actually a series of injections into the spine. I was bent over to really separate out the vertebrae, so they could jam the needle in between them. Having gone through it I can assure you jam is the right verb (Note – apart from a bit which went wrong appearing in a later post – this was the most painful part of the operation). Then it’s a matter of whether or not the anaesthetic is going to work. I know that anaesthetists are highly trained professionals, but you get concerned after ten minutes when they ask “Can you feel this?” and you definitely can. Apart from that I’m much happier with the idea of a local anaesthetic. I want to be in a position to yell if I feel something, rather than be paralysed.
They kept pouring a liquid up and down my torso and asking me if I could feel any heat. Eventually, perhaps 15 minutes or so, I couldn’t below a certain point. It was like part of my body had been turned off. I was wheeled into the theatre in front of quite a few people. Ego forces me to assume it was probably the most appreciative audience anyone got that day. I was asked if I wanted some gas to help relax me. I said yes and took a breath. It’s just as well that I wasn’t following the example of Abel Pharmboy (who live blogged an operation in a similar region), and live-blogging it, because I blinked and when my eyes opened I heard “He’s back with us”.
Next it was a case of being wheeled into another room for more waiting. Getting comfortable was awkward as most of my body was paralysed. After I failed to have a catastrophic reaction to whatever it was in my body for an hour, I was wheeled into a room opposite the main reception. You can think of it as an ‘L’ shape with the door at the top of the L and my bed, out of sight of the door, at the bottom right. So inside the door is a perfect place if you want to chat about something private, unless there’s a patient in the room trying to sleep. Between attempts to snooze I also read up Robert Hannah’s chapter on the Pantheon in Time in Antiquity. I find spherical geometry so much easier to understand when I’m assisted by powerful painkillers.
As night came I put on John Diamond’s C, because Cowards get Cancer too on as an audiobook. I got as far as the bit where he has to break the news to Nigella that he’s been diagnosed with cancer before deciding that it was a really stupid choice for book this evening. Instead I put on Carpool, the one with Jonathan Ross, if you’re interested. Much better.
Useful links:
Umm… that’s it. It seems men aren’t eager to read how their testicles could be removed. Who’d have guessed?
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