I have now been officially plicated. Things got off to a shaky start on Monday when I arrived at dialysis only to be told my appointment at the pre-assessment clinic, the one I had been told to ignore, was now. Fortunately it was only across the hall; unfortunately, it was in the Transplant Clinic, so my joy at my upcoming operation was tempered by sitting down amongst all the glowing post-transplant patients with their stupid working kidneys - smug bastards.
I had a mercifully short wait before a boy of all of about twelve popped his head round the door and asked me to follow him down the corridor to a consultation room. He was not, in fact, on work experience; he was (or so he claimed) on the surgical team. He was barely older than me; he could have been one of my mates. When he asked me if I had any questions, I resisted the urge to query how old he was and instead voiced my inherent fear about the possibility of waking-up mid-operation...now who was the immature one.
I was presumably judged a suitable candidate for surgery because I was allowed to skip off to dialysis. I was greatly reassured when JT, the senior and incredibly experienced surgeon who would be doing the procedure, came to take a final look at the job at hand. Excellent, I thought, very thorough; then he gave my fistula a squeeze and asked, "Just remind me again why we're doing this...?"
As the operation was set for Wednesday, I would not be able to follow my usual dialysis schedule so the nurses booked me in for an extra session on Tuesday. Arriving at London Bridge in the afternoon, I felt most peculiar. Dialysis? On a Tuesday? Surely the world would implode in on itself. I dialysed along side a host of brand new patients, the only one of whom I recognised being the evangelical Christian Lady who believes she doesn't need to control her diet because God is ensuring her potassium level stays under 5. Hallelujah and Monster Munch for everyone, then.
After my session, I made my way to Katie's for dinner with Fi and Ella. Conscious that I would be nil by mouth from 8 am tomorrow morning, I devoured the spag bol Katie had lovingly prepared as though it was my last meal. The relaxed atmosphere and easy chat was exactly what I needed for the evening before surgery and by the time I arrived home and fell into bed, I was feeling quite calm at the prospect. When I woke on Wednesday morning, I was verging on excited. I took a couple of quick "before" snaps of my arm and was horrified at the way it looked; thank God it was being sliced into later that day.
My anxiety levels rose with every tube stop I passed aon the Northern Line. I fidgeted through Moorgate, grew nervous at Bank and by the time I arrived at London Bridge, I was consumed by my anxiety. Walking past hordes of commuters, tourists and workers, looking alternately confused and determined, all I could think was, "I'm about to have an operation." It was an un-nerving dichotomy to think that whilst I was presently stocking up on magazines in Smiths, in a few hours time I would be unconscious and JT's fingers would be deftly picking at the inner workings of my arm.
Before any of that, however, was the inevitable waiting (hence the magazines). I had finished Heat by the time I was called through to see the doctor and answer the exact same set of questions put to me once already by the pre-adolescent surgeon on Monday. I was beginning to feel like a contestant on "Who Wants to Have Their Fistula Plicated?", wondering whether it was possible to give a wrong answer and have my impending op cancelled and fall through a trap-door. Still, I breezed through round 2 and my prize was an NHS surgical robe, navy dressing gown and (my particular favourite) a fetching pair of green slippers made out of foam. Everything was at least two sizes too big (no chidlrens' sizes, then...?); this was obviously the segment of the show that tested my resilience in the face of abject humiliation.
More waiting and though I had Glamour, as the minutes ticked by I became decreasingly interested in an article instructing me on what I should do upon finding a naked man in my bed. Eventually, an anaesthetist called me over to answer - you guessed it - the same set of questions for what would now be the third time. Did I have any metal work in my body? Any loose teeth? Was I allergic to anything? No; no and a "nope" just to keep things interesting.
Finally, the liaison nurse who would accompany me down to theatre called me to his station. (I was now cursing my parents for having named me Rosamund, having spent the morning enduring a whole range of exotic and wholly incorrect pronunciations). We went through the questions. Again. It really must be true what they say: doctors' handwriting surely is illegible, even to other doctors. At least they were thorough. The porter turned up to take me down to theatre, but the nurse turned to me and asked, "Are you ok to walk?" and once I had replied I was, told the porter we would follow him down. So the porter, the nurse and I took the lift together, standing around the bed I should have been lying on.
After a spell watching what might have been The Man From Uncle in the pre-op holding area, the surgical nurses came through to collect me. Again, I followed my bed on foot and walked in to the actual operating theatre where I hovered by the door, chewing my lip nervously. I wished I had brought Bear with me. After laughing at me for a bit, the nurses were wonderful and settled me onto the bed. I had been dreading having the canula put in, but in the event it was quick - if not exactly pain-free - and I only said "mother-fucker" once, which is certainly progress for me. The anesthetist pushed a hit of fentenol down the line and my anxiety melted away. "Here comes the good stuff," she said, wielding a large syringe of anesthetic and after a mumbled, "thank you", I inhaled deeply from the oxygen mask and that was it. Game over.
I came round one hour and twenty minutes after going under. My throat was sore from the breathing tube and my mouth was as dry as a badger's arse, but I was too drowsy from the lingering medication to be anything other than happy it was all over. My arm looked flatter, certainly, but the bandaging made it difficult to see the changes. JT appeared smiling, which I took to be a good sign, and told me it had all gone well; then, just before he left said: "We'll see what it looks like in a couple of weeks and if it's still too big, we'll just do it again."
Ellie was waiting for me upstairs; for my post-op journey back I had been allowed the luxury of actually traveling on my bed. Though still a bit woozy and wobbly, forty minutes after coming round, Ellie and I headed for M&S to stock up on enough food to get us through nuclear winter and jumped into the nearest taxi home.
It is now Friday. I have spent the last two days shuffling between my bed and the sofa, eating Bourbons and watching DVDs; if my arm wasn't so sore, I would have thought this as close to a perfect way to spend time as one might hope to get. The traces of anesthetic in my blood stream meant that any time I lay down, my eyes closed of their own volition and I fell asleep, just like the dolly with retractable eye-lids I owned as a six year old. I know I am starting to feel better because I am getting increasingly frustrated at my own decrepitude: everything must be done one-handed and I cannot shower yet which is making me especially cranky. I am not quite there yet, though, and conversations that last longer than ten minutes are an effort and I remain irritable and not much fun to be around. I am dreading using the fistula for dialysis today; just lifting my arm is painful so the thought of having needles pushed into it is not appealing. Despite everything, I am glad it is done and the fistula definitely looks smaller if not totally flattened out.
I shall finish by apologising for the quality of this entry, in both its substance and its presentation. I wanted to chronicle the events of the past few days but writing it one-handed as my left continues to throb and sting has been more exhausting than I had imagined! I couldn't even come up with a pithy pun for the title....
I had a mercifully short wait before a boy of all of about twelve popped his head round the door and asked me to follow him down the corridor to a consultation room. He was not, in fact, on work experience; he was (or so he claimed) on the surgical team. He was barely older than me; he could have been one of my mates. When he asked me if I had any questions, I resisted the urge to query how old he was and instead voiced my inherent fear about the possibility of waking-up mid-operation...now who was the immature one.
I was presumably judged a suitable candidate for surgery because I was allowed to skip off to dialysis. I was greatly reassured when JT, the senior and incredibly experienced surgeon who would be doing the procedure, came to take a final look at the job at hand. Excellent, I thought, very thorough; then he gave my fistula a squeeze and asked, "Just remind me again why we're doing this...?"
As the operation was set for Wednesday, I would not be able to follow my usual dialysis schedule so the nurses booked me in for an extra session on Tuesday. Arriving at London Bridge in the afternoon, I felt most peculiar. Dialysis? On a Tuesday? Surely the world would implode in on itself. I dialysed along side a host of brand new patients, the only one of whom I recognised being the evangelical Christian Lady who believes she doesn't need to control her diet because God is ensuring her potassium level stays under 5. Hallelujah and Monster Munch for everyone, then.
After my session, I made my way to Katie's for dinner with Fi and Ella. Conscious that I would be nil by mouth from 8 am tomorrow morning, I devoured the spag bol Katie had lovingly prepared as though it was my last meal. The relaxed atmosphere and easy chat was exactly what I needed for the evening before surgery and by the time I arrived home and fell into bed, I was feeling quite calm at the prospect. When I woke on Wednesday morning, I was verging on excited. I took a couple of quick "before" snaps of my arm and was horrified at the way it looked; thank God it was being sliced into later that day.
My anxiety levels rose with every tube stop I passed aon the Northern Line. I fidgeted through Moorgate, grew nervous at Bank and by the time I arrived at London Bridge, I was consumed by my anxiety. Walking past hordes of commuters, tourists and workers, looking alternately confused and determined, all I could think was, "I'm about to have an operation." It was an un-nerving dichotomy to think that whilst I was presently stocking up on magazines in Smiths, in a few hours time I would be unconscious and JT's fingers would be deftly picking at the inner workings of my arm.
Before any of that, however, was the inevitable waiting (hence the magazines). I had finished Heat by the time I was called through to see the doctor and answer the exact same set of questions put to me once already by the pre-adolescent surgeon on Monday. I was beginning to feel like a contestant on "Who Wants to Have Their Fistula Plicated?", wondering whether it was possible to give a wrong answer and have my impending op cancelled and fall through a trap-door. Still, I breezed through round 2 and my prize was an NHS surgical robe, navy dressing gown and (my particular favourite) a fetching pair of green slippers made out of foam. Everything was at least two sizes too big (no chidlrens' sizes, then...?); this was obviously the segment of the show that tested my resilience in the face of abject humiliation.
More waiting and though I had Glamour, as the minutes ticked by I became decreasingly interested in an article instructing me on what I should do upon finding a naked man in my bed. Eventually, an anaesthetist called me over to answer - you guessed it - the same set of questions for what would now be the third time. Did I have any metal work in my body? Any loose teeth? Was I allergic to anything? No; no and a "nope" just to keep things interesting.
Finally, the liaison nurse who would accompany me down to theatre called me to his station. (I was now cursing my parents for having named me Rosamund, having spent the morning enduring a whole range of exotic and wholly incorrect pronunciations). We went through the questions. Again. It really must be true what they say: doctors' handwriting surely is illegible, even to other doctors. At least they were thorough. The porter turned up to take me down to theatre, but the nurse turned to me and asked, "Are you ok to walk?" and once I had replied I was, told the porter we would follow him down. So the porter, the nurse and I took the lift together, standing around the bed I should have been lying on.
After a spell watching what might have been The Man From Uncle in the pre-op holding area, the surgical nurses came through to collect me. Again, I followed my bed on foot and walked in to the actual operating theatre where I hovered by the door, chewing my lip nervously. I wished I had brought Bear with me. After laughing at me for a bit, the nurses were wonderful and settled me onto the bed. I had been dreading having the canula put in, but in the event it was quick - if not exactly pain-free - and I only said "mother-fucker" once, which is certainly progress for me. The anesthetist pushed a hit of fentenol down the line and my anxiety melted away. "Here comes the good stuff," she said, wielding a large syringe of anesthetic and after a mumbled, "thank you", I inhaled deeply from the oxygen mask and that was it. Game over.
I came round one hour and twenty minutes after going under. My throat was sore from the breathing tube and my mouth was as dry as a badger's arse, but I was too drowsy from the lingering medication to be anything other than happy it was all over. My arm looked flatter, certainly, but the bandaging made it difficult to see the changes. JT appeared smiling, which I took to be a good sign, and told me it had all gone well; then, just before he left said: "We'll see what it looks like in a couple of weeks and if it's still too big, we'll just do it again."
Ellie was waiting for me upstairs; for my post-op journey back I had been allowed the luxury of actually traveling on my bed. Though still a bit woozy and wobbly, forty minutes after coming round, Ellie and I headed for M&S to stock up on enough food to get us through nuclear winter and jumped into the nearest taxi home.
It is now Friday. I have spent the last two days shuffling between my bed and the sofa, eating Bourbons and watching DVDs; if my arm wasn't so sore, I would have thought this as close to a perfect way to spend time as one might hope to get. The traces of anesthetic in my blood stream meant that any time I lay down, my eyes closed of their own volition and I fell asleep, just like the dolly with retractable eye-lids I owned as a six year old. I know I am starting to feel better because I am getting increasingly frustrated at my own decrepitude: everything must be done one-handed and I cannot shower yet which is making me especially cranky. I am not quite there yet, though, and conversations that last longer than ten minutes are an effort and I remain irritable and not much fun to be around. I am dreading using the fistula for dialysis today; just lifting my arm is painful so the thought of having needles pushed into it is not appealing. Despite everything, I am glad it is done and the fistula definitely looks smaller if not totally flattened out.
I shall finish by apologising for the quality of this entry, in both its substance and its presentation. I wanted to chronicle the events of the past few days but writing it one-handed as my left continues to throb and sting has been more exhausting than I had imagined! I couldn't even come up with a pithy pun for the title....
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