Day 14 - The day before my op

Tuesday 22nd September 2009

I had now given up trying to get some sleep. Thankfully I had my two MP3 players to relive the boredom of the endless hours during the night. One contained music and the other poems and an audio book of Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility.

Two auxiliary nurses came into my room shortly after breakfast and asked if I would like a shower. Due to my pressure sore I had only been able get washed using a bowl. I said I would but was concerned about the dressing getting wet.
“Don’t worry”, replied one of the nurses, “we’ll put something over the dressing then change it as soon as you come out of the shower”.

When I had showers in hospital before they usually left you to your own devises. Not these two. They were in both in there rubbing and scrubbing…

While I was having my lunch (a banana) the anaesthetist for tomorrows operation came to see me. He explained that unfortunately I couldn’t have a local anaesthetic so it would have to be a general.

I have a bad reaction to general anaesthetic and vomit constantly afterwards (when I had my hip replacement I threw up non-stop for twelve hours). I mentioned this to him and he promised to see what he could do, but wasn’t hopeful as vomiting was one of the side effects of any general anaesthetic.

If I was honest I didn’t really like him. He didn’t put me at ease and I got the impression that he wasn’t bothered about my concerns.

Kermit came to see me and said that my operation was scheduled for mid morning.

I was really nerves about my operation particularly about going into intensive care afterwards. I thought that patients went into ICU when they were really ill so I was worried that they were not telling me something.

Karl, the charge nurses, sat down and gave me a pep talk to try and get over any concerns that was making me anxious about going in to intensive care. It did help a little but I was still worried.