(To read my cancer story from the beginning start here – April / May 2018 – You Have Cancer)

My 2nd Operation in a Week

If you have read my previous posts you will know my 1st operation due to jaw cancer hadn’t gone too well.

Although my consultant said it looked OK he wasn’t happy with the blue colour and had decided to open me up again to have a look.

I was still pretty hazy from yesterdays operation and the lack of sleep, so cant remember too much from between being told I needed a 2nd operation and actually having it.

I remember laying there with all the tubes in me, the 2 horrible bottles I was connected to which were draining fluid from my neck and especially the tracheostomy which meant I couldn’t say a word

There were 3 other Guys on the ward with me and 3 out of the 4 of us had a tracheotomy (so much for my chatting)

I’m pretty sure a physio came to see me mid morning and although I had the operation less than 24 hours earlier, I’m sure she got me standing up leaning on a walking frame.

I was surprised that there was still no pain at all, I remember the 1st time Mr Walton had told me they would be removing a bone from my leg I had visions of never walking again and being permanently in a wheelchair, yet here I was a day after my OP standing up and in no pain.

I also saw a speech and language lady and the nutritionist team, but as they new I was having another operation imminently they said I couldn’t eat anything yet and they would be back tomorrow to show me how to use my PEG tube

I was then taken down for surgery and remember being on a bed in the surgery waiting room with a different nurse talking to me and fiddling with different tubes and wires, it was really horrible lying there amongst others who were being operated on that day, seeing the hustle bustle around me and just waiting for my operation, when one of my ward nurses came along and started talking about taking me back.

Thinking they had things wrong I got the writing board they had given me (as I couldn’t talk) and scribbled on it, “I’ve got to have a 2nd operation”
she looked at me a bit strange and said, we’re taking you back to your ward now, I scribbled on my board again “what about my operation?” when the nurse who had been doing all my tubes and things said You’ve already had it.

I was amazed and just cannot explain the relief and joy, I was convinced I had been laying there for the last 15 minutes or so just waiting to be taken in for my operation, where as I was in fact in the post op room waiting to go back to my ward.

Story continues here – I never liked lifts

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