Pain Like No Other

Ok that's enough for now about my fellow inmates  patients at the hospital.  Now back to the reason that I was in there, to have an abdominal myomectomy.

I went in for my op on a Tuesday and went home on the Saturday.  It has to be said that I have never experienced pain like it.  For 3 days post op I had my own morphine pca, basically press a button for pain relief.  I kind of liked it but after a while morphine is very strong so the docs and nurses wean you off it. Oohhh noo.  Anyway, my body basically felt like I'd done 10 rounds in a boxing ring.  My stomach was swollen and tender.  I had a catheter in for most of the week and didn't go for a number 2 for a good 3/4 days.

As you are less reliant on morphine, you are encouraged to move around a bit more as that's gets your body working and heading back to some kind of normality.  Generally at the beginning when I tried standing and walking around I felt dizzy and unsteady but slowly but surely I got used to it.  It was nice to walk over to talk to other people on the ward. I certainly was no 100 metre sprinter and generally had a hand pressed on my abdomen as it gave me some comfort.

Once the morphine had gone it was onto those lovely painkiller 'cocktails' codeine, ibuprofen and paracetamol.  Lots to begin with at regular intervals during the day.  Week 1 and week 2 post op were definitely the most painful.

It hurt to past wind - oh my god did it hurt.  Part of the stomach bloating is due to a build up of gas so that needed a means of escape and it was certainly painful,  you really found out how gas passes through your body, could have made your own map! Sneezing also hurt, as did laughing.  All these normally usual bodily functions turned into pain.

Getting out of bed was another excuse for pain.  As your ab muscles are not working, being able to manoeuvre yourself in and out of bed, chairs or anything else was an art in itself. The trick was to rotate  your legs to be over the side of the bed then to swing your body over and push yourself up with your arms.

Being Part Of the 'In' Crowd

As mentioned previously, I have never been in hospital before.  Little did I know that they are such a hive of activity. They take monitoring and evaluation to a whole new level. Urine, blood pressure, taking bloods, pills, anti clotting injections (that bloody hurt and often drew blood I'll have ya know), pills, catheter and monitoring of it. Then it's onto the cast that make up 'the hospital'.

Consultants are obviously the leaders of the pack and they only grace you with their presence once every few days.  Mine thought he was cool and basically had a humour bypass but hey he's a decent surgeon so won't hold that against him.

Otherwise you're in the hands of the gaggle of junior docs. I have to admit that the main junior doc assigned to  me was a bit of a cow and managed to freak me out no end at times when I just didn't need that. It was her first week at the hospital and so she was eager to follow the consultants words to the latter.  But freaking me out when it came time to remove my catheter for the 1st and then 2nd time was no help at all.  By saying that if  bladder didn't wake up soon I'd have problems for the rest of the life for some reason was not inspiring. It made me bloody scared and only seeing a bad bleak future for myself.  I do think that in terms of people these junior docs have a lot to learn- empathy is one of those things that goes cap in hand with experience and  maturity.  It was painfully clear that many of these junior docs were fresh out of school and had no idea about people or how to understand and communicate with them.

As for nurses there were good and bad ones.  And some that were a combination of the two much like Jekyll and Hyde. There was one who was my main nurse when I arrived - she tried to take out a line from my hand when it couldn't actually be done so she was tugging hard at my hand just to make sure and yes I did almost cry.  She was a bit of what I'd call a brown noser - licking doctors arses and smiling at the sister but at times she was an outright bitch.

I was moved to another part of the ward for my last few days and the nurse there was loads nicer.  She treated all of her patients differently and took time to get to know us. She had been an inpatient herself at the hospital for a similar op so had empathy and maturity.

Then there was the I work way too hard nurse.  She did something crazy like 3 or 4 nts back to back so stress, ridiculous workload and sleep deprivation  meant that she was horrible to patients.  There was no empathy, pure bossiness and general rattiness.  At one point my anti clotting injection that she had tended to give me a in my arm (tho it made my arm bleed) - well the next night she was going to give it into my belly. I told her to take her hike as one of the symptoms from my op was constipation and I hadn't been for days and had a really swollen, tender belly.  I told her no categorically. I won - it was in my arm. Yay.

And as for the patients, where do I begin ..........

Preparing for the Big Day

As a hospital inpatient virgin, I was a bit flummoxed about what I needed to do before heading into hospital for an abdominal myomectomy. Work, life, what happens if things go wrong - so much to think about and such little time. 

Home - well this was me setting up home entertainment (tv, dvd, hifi) in my room for those days post op when I'm not too mobile. Obviously this was a bit of a challenge and I've still not quite managed to get my Freeview to work but hey. Also, had to get in some frozen food and other bits so that I wouldn't starve whilst recupuratting.

Work, saying to my boss for the umpteenth time I'm having a major op and will be off for around a month or so.  It sinked in on my last week when all my plans had a big gap in December. So then it turned into handover notes time and getting things into a nice state where I could hand them over to freelancers etc. It was funny talking to colleagues about heading into hospital - had comments such as " I'd trade places with you anytime to have a month off work - could do with that at the 'mo".  Did point out that major surgery wasn't a walk in the park and a high level of pain and discomfort would also be part of the package so quite the picnic they'd assumed.



The main thing for me was worrying I guess - would I be ok?  Would all the fibroids be removed?  Would I still be able to have kids? Would I still be ok to be operated on as my period was due when I was being operated on?  So many questions and my appt with the consultant happened 6 mths prior to my my op so there wasn't really anywhere to turn.  I have to admit that I did a lot of online fact finding and people's blogs about their myomectomy experiences were a god send.  Some stuff I had to take with a pinch of salt and one thing that stood out was the fact that everyone was different in terms of how they reacted to the op. 


In the end to settle the what happens as I'll be on  my period question was settled when I rang the ward where I'd be and spoke to the sister.  She also helped reassure some of my general neurotic fears so that was good.  And thank god I could take tranexamic acid tablets before my op (outside the nil by mouth time) so at least I'd be able to leave the house 2 days prior to my op.  Without them another 2 days of my life would have been ruled out as my periods were just crazy. 

To Ab Myo or To Not Ab Myo

The decision to have an abdominal myomectomy was a big one for me.  Never been in hospital, used to having my own independence and the thought of things going wrong quite clearly scared me.  


Having had heavy periods and being diagnosed with fibroids around 4 years ago was where things began for me.  For the first couple of years my symptoms were being managed by taking tablets but gradually the impact of these was lessening and by stomach was ballooning.  

In the past year as well as starting to buy size 18 clothes (I used to be a 12/14) and am pretty fit hitting the gym regularly. I was effectively reaching the end of the road - and when I was away travelling worrying my arse off about what to do when my period arrived with its crazy flow and me sharing a room - I knew that I had to take action to deal with this.  The horrible fibroids that were invading my body had to go. 


When I got back from travelling, I had an appointment with the specialist 2 days and that was when I voiced that I wanted a myomectomy to have my fibroids removed.  The Dr went on to tell me the downsides of the op, how it's a major thing to do and the long recovery time.  But my mind was made up.  Being Afro Caribbean means that its more likely that the fibroids may make a reappearance.  I wanted to hopefully get this thing settled ideally once and for all or if not quite that, at least have some respite from my symptoms.

Why Am I Here?

A rather profound question to ask but one which is actually quite simple to answer.  I had suffered from fibroids for 4 years with symptoms that were getting worse and worse. Often heading to the docs to explain this, I found myself questionning if everything was in my mind.  In the end, I realised that I wanted my life back and put myself forward for an abdominal myomectomy - actually I thought I would have had to battle a bit harder than I did but hey.

December 1 was the day of my op. This blog tracks my thoughts leading up to the big day, my 1st ever experiences as an NHS inpatient (good and bad) and how I am now doing in the long phase that is recovery.  Anyway, I figured that writing a new blog would be a good way to:

• keep me (and hopefully you) entertained whilst I'm home in recovery
• share my stories with others experiencing a similar op as the internet was where I found out lots of useful info

Anyway, I hope that you stay tuned for this journey :)