Pre-operative Assessment

Right then.
Time to catch up a bit. 

My last post was all about waiting around. Well there weren't too much of that once the ball got rolling. 

The Top Man had suggested we do our little job on a Friday. His nurse phoned me a few days later to say there was a slight problem with the date. I immediately assumed another delay. Nope. They wanted me to come in on Tuesday instead. This meant a very rapid brain reshuffle as I tried to figure out what to do about work and washing and finding the good pyjamas. 

They very kindly accommodated me in the preassessment clinic in the early hours of the morning so that I could get to work, get home, get packed and head off with my three oldest friends to celebrate us getting even older. I am a big fan of that these days. 

We had a lovely time, but the body isn't really able for celebration-levels of fizzy wine any more, and those little background anxiety feelings that you don't notice until it's too late meant I missed out on the great night's sleep I was banking on. Still there would be plenty of time to sleep when I got my general anaesthetic. 

The disco party for fourteen 8-year-old girls went remarkably well I thought. And it meant the house was clean, briefly, which is the best anyone can hope for if you ask me. 

Every patient I saw on the Monday could have been a candidate for a long essay question in some ICGP exam; at one point I thought someone was putting them up to it ("make sure to mention the chest pains just as you're walking out the door.")
But I got through them all, and all the paperwork and bloods and what-if messages for the nurses. I told most of the patients I was having an operation and would see them in six weeks. They paused briefly and said good luck, but left it at that. That wasn't so hard now, was it? 
I have told our receptionist to tell our most gossippy patient that I'm having a little op (I bloody hate that word op), so that the entire community will soon know and will be reassured by the normality of that as a reason for my absence. They have been understandably a bit bewildered by my come-as-I-please attitude to work in recent months, so this might settle them a bit. 

I tried much harder this time to acknowledge my tendency to be a bit jumpy and bad-tempered when I'm anxious, and kept the preparing for hospital until the kids went to bed. Helped a lot by the fact I wasn't going in there until mid-morning, so no need for taxis at dawn and frantic goodnights. So we had a nice evening and a relaxed bedtime story and generally maintained our Waltons-ness.
I walked the kids to school the next day, to get my step-count up on the old Fitbit (I've decided I am going to use it scientifically in my post-operative recovery. When I say scientifically, I mean I'm going to look at the amount of steps I've done each day and say, "aren't I great?")
I packed two bags, one for hand luggage and one for the hold.

I felt like I was waiting again. Waiting on the bed for the nurse to bring the gown. Waiting for the man to take the bloods. Waiting for my tongue to shrivel up from thirst. But it wasn't really that long, and it wasn't really that much later when I was sat in the theatre reception with my frilly blue hat on and my mouth answering the same twenty questions for the twentieth time. 
It was jointed up there. Fellas on chairs in corridors, old wans standing with all their baggage next to the recovery room, nurses scurrying up and down shouting "do you have One Mary because Three's bloods aren't back so Seven is free now".

Anaesthetists are nice people. I'm not just saying that because they carry around little syringes of Midazolam and shoot me up with them (well maybe that does cloud my judgment a wee bit). They are just nice calm reassuring people who never seem to be rushed. Christ knows what they're like once the patient is asleep, probably raving around the place to Sepultura while beating the nurses with NG tubes, but to me they are purveyors of calm serenity. (Yeah. Midazolam.)

I was awake while they put the epidural in, apparently, but I have no recollection of it. I am assured that while I was talking a fair amount of nonsensical shite, I didn't offend anyone. 

And so the next stuff happened, but I'm afraid I can't tell you much about it. 
Though I know a man who might.