It’s Out

Yesterday, 16th July, I had my operation at The Royal Surrey Hospital to remove the gallstone and my gallbladder. So I can now get on with getting better and going home, hopefully soon! However it is minimum 3 days and maximum 7 days. I feel surprisingly good, but I am still on an epidural and so have massive pain killers and feel little pain. Last night I was having hourly observations and so had a pretty disturbed nights sleep, but I reckon I got 6 hours of broken sleep despite hourly observations and sleeping sitting up, and feel remarkably ok today.

So, for the gory details so if you are of the persuasion that you would rather not know skip this paragraph! I have lots of complications, I am very different inside to the normal as I have had bariatric surgery to have a stomach bypass, I have had a third of my small bowel removed with the tumour last year, I have adhesions and had a lot of scaring from the fistula last year. Added to this I had an anaphylactic shock reaction to the general anaesthetic last year and was prick tested positive to all muscle relaxant drugs, all three families of muscle relaxants. Plus the gallstone was massive (5cm) and blocking my bile duct and had caused a bleed in the hepatic vein near the artery. So a lot of planning went into my surgery. They managed without the muscle relaxants and when Mr. Worthington operated on me he had said if it was really bad he would have to take a bit of small bowel to replace the bile duct in the worst case. As I understand it, I had two fistulas when they went in, one in the bile duct and one in the duodenum so these had to be sorted, there was a lot of puss around the gallstone and it was all very infected (despite lots of antibiotics since coming into hospital). He removed the gallbladder and gallstone, and then he sewed up the bile duct and the duodenum fistulas. He stitched the site where I had had the bleed earlier in the week. This was an open procedure and I have a neat scar of about 5 inches under my ribs. Post op I asked Mr. Worthington if it had been straight forward and he said it was difficult and not at all easy. As I am under I am blissfully ignorant of it all. I was given an epidural for the operation which they have left at 80% post op, heart monitoring, a drain of the wound, a bile duct drain, a catheter, I am on fluids through a central line which was put in on Monday. I did wake up to two cannulas in my arm and they have been removed. I was in recovery for a while and got back on to the ward to see Mark, he had come in very early to see me before I went down to surgery. So we spent the rest of the day together. I ate well post operation however felt a bit nauseous at supper and did not manage too much. I also feel itchy. The Royal Surrey was chosen as my anaesthetic was so complicated and they had the emergency teams available if needed. It is clever as there is a tunnel between the hospitals and I can go in my bed to the other hospital.

Today the plan is to get me off drips and drains and to x-ray me to see if it is working. I will try to get out of bed and stretch my legs and have a wash – I know that just washing will exhaust me, but it is good that I have an appetite. Mary the dietician came to see me and so has Mr. Worthington, and they are happy with me, I will be on TPN tonight to get as much vitamins and minerals into me, and there has been no results from St. Mark’s, at least she is finding it hard as well. Sadly I was in the best room of the house, however it is in the medical side and I am going to be moved to a surgical room which is not as spacious, boo hoo as the other room was amazing.

I can finally look forward to getting out and fingers crossed not too much pain in the future, I have been living in pain for the last six/nine months.

17/7/19