Charting my journey through breast duct removal - update
My apologies for not concluding my duct removal story and forgive a truncated version of it now.
The late newsreader Peter Sissons used to say "You couldn't make it up" and that might be a fair comment upon the next stage of the processes.
After failing by the vegetables I got home and found solace and comfort in reaching out to friends. It is amazing how a few words here and there can be so helpful. useful for us all to know that although we may feel we are doing nothing to help at all, in fact even just engaging and providing solidarity means a lot to the recipient. You even gain strength from re-reading those words. Words are indeed powerful.
Over the next few weeks I was called in to be further assessed and in a way this got me more used to the shock of this unexpected moment with my body. They didn't install a guider thingy - a fabulous tool which is activated by the surgeon to locate exactly where the offending duct lies. It turns out mine was very close to the surface and so just wasn't possible.
The day arrives with a blip
The day of the operation dawned and this, dear friends, is when the chaos ensued. I had a bath to relax me and suddenly Christopher called up "I think I might be testing positive for covid. The line is really feint - what do you think?" We will not go into what I actually thought, but staring at the thinnest of red lines, my heart sank.
I knew I had to ring the hospital. (I do wonder if some might have ignored that- but we didn't). I had the number for the nurse on duty. No answer and no answer machine. Meanwhile a further test was proving far more positive for Christopher.
There was a limited time available to get advice and to leave the house. Finally after about the 4th time of trying the nurse answered, in rather a flustered manner.
"Hello, I need advice. I am coming in for a breast duct removal procedure today and my husband has just tested positive for covid. What do I do?"
The nurse drew her breath sharply and said "I was just in a meeting and have come out to answer you, but there are no procedures today."
It was a morning of shocks.
"Er, well I am down to come in.."
Interrupting me "I think you may have misread the letter, it is just giving you an appointment time"
"I assure you it is a letter regarding the surgical procedure, and it is today"
"Well there is nothing scheduled"
"OK - I will read you part of the letter I have in front of me, oh and by the way, you sent me for a covid test and I have just done 3 days isolation as a consequence"
There was silence at the other end and the nurse said she would have to go and find out what was happening. But I couldn't come in obviously and to stay put until she got back to me.
To say I was distressed is an understatement. It shows the level of stress within the NHS but also the inablitiy to understand the words that you say to patients who are necessarily in a more upset state. This is a constant that I come across most fo the time in my dealings with the sector.
The upshot was that apparently there were just two of us down for that day, we had been thrown into the non scheduled day because the surgeon was herself having time out and was trying to finish her list. I wondered if the other patient had just turned up and was facing the same wall of refusal.
I was able to remind the nurse that we were at the stage in the pandemic where you no longer had to isolate if your partner had tested positive and the nurse agreed with me and booked me an appointment 3 days later (and another trip to the car park) to see a different surgeon.
Take two
Sometimes you realise things happen for reasons. In fact, i don't know why we don't have that as a default mode really.
I turned up in the office of a larger than life character with a sense of humour, whose first words were
"Sorry, i have no idea why you are here!"
I explained, feeling glad that I was at least in charge of my case. He rang the senior nurse to come in and during the conversation, she suggested I might need to start all over again.
"No - we don't need to do that- you'll be at the back of the queue and it will take forever. We have the recent test results, we have the ultra sound, we know what we are dealing with - I will just throw you onto my next available list".
And so it was that less than a month later, I was in the waiting room with severla other women, wearing fetching blue compression stockings and facing pregnancy tests!
"Are you serious? Have you checked out my age?"
Sniffy response. "We have to carry out the procedure for all women"
"Seriously, can you not make a judgement?"
More sniffiness. Oh dear!
Then in to see the surgeon.
"I'm not pregnant" I said
He laughed his deep and resonant laugh and asked if I had any other concerns. I said I was so pleased he was doing the surgery, because I felt in safe hands with him. He was a chuckler. A people person. Somebody whose humour was not far from the surface. I knew that during my surgery the chances were that his words were going to be positive and light; and that matters. Words matter. They invade our cells and affect them. Lots of research is showing how our bodies react to external influences at a cellular level. If you remember the television programme: The Good Life - Tom experiments with two seedlings in diferent boxes. he shouts abuse at one and is caring and thoughtful and loving to the other. I don't think we ever get a final conclusion there, but since then much has been discovered about our health and what we experience.
My big concern is around not waking up during surgery. It happend twice to a cousin of mine and I was at pains to point this out to the lovely anaesthetist. He in fact said you are not technically asleep, your conscious brain is just disabled. That was a new way of thinking about it to me. They injected me and i was alarmingly awake. I remember the last thing i said was "I'm still here"!
Normally after an anaesthetic, I wake up on the trolly. Not so this time. I gradually became aware of distant figures and thought I was still waiting to go under. My name was being spoken but i wanted to ignore it. But it pulled me in. There were blurry figures and somebody askin gme if i wanted to be sick.
"No - I feel fine"
"Are you sure"
"yes really. I am never sick " I said and as i spoke the sound of somebody who was not equally blessed drifted towards us.
There was a pain which got sharper and sharper. This apparently sent my vitals all ove the place and I couldn't ignore it, try as I might. This was dealt with immediately by a dose of Fentanyl. Wow! What is that?! I had never heard of it before, but it was a wonder. Pain subsided. Vitals more normal. I felt fantastic and ready to rock and roll.
The nurses were great. I was on good form. That bit was over. I could control the next sequences. I was to have Codeine (and a laxative) - the only problem was that the hospital had run out of Codeine.
Back to Tesco!
The solution was to get my husband to pick up the prescription from the ward, pop over to Tesco and get it from their pharmacy. I just laughed. As Peter said "You couldn't make it up"
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