Sister Morphine

Day 102

General status update

FEC5 - day 8

Anxiety level/insane euphoria (+/- 1-10,000): we’re adopting this category to allow for the violent mood swings engendered by the steroids. For the last few days I’ve been essentially bat-shit crazy – albeit very cheerfully so - but keeping on with the steroids has significantly decreased the power of the chemo side effects, and lowered my distress levels accordingly. Steroid dose now being reduced, so am starting to calm down, which will probably be a relief to Matron Becky, who was somewhat startled to have been elected World Mum/Mother Goddess yesterday, although she says she’s definitely going to put in for a pay rise.

Nausea demon: very morose over our 5am breakfast, and only had one bite of toast. Worried about him.

Chemo Muse: she sent me off to bed last night at 11pm, saying that I REALLY needed to get some rest now, and I mustn’t think about staying up all night writing again. Odd.

Despair Demon: there were noises coming from the airing cupboard last night, when I got up at 3am to get a glass of water – it seems he had company. Hmmm.

Chemo Brian: he’s really happy because when I popped into TKMaxx yesterday whilst waiting for a prescription to be sorted at Boots next door, I found the ultimate sofa comfort blanket – a huge, soft grey, chunky Argyll hand-knit cotton throw. You can never have enough throws, and I love it so much I fully intend to buried in this one, although not anytime soon, obvs.

PICC line: gone, but not forgotten

State of mind: Still Dexy-energised; no moping

Hair: there

  

Previously on Chemo Nights: it is the 4^th October, 2012, the day of the lumpectomy operation on my right breast. After a 7 1/2 hour wait for the operation, punctuated by some fairly deranged behaviour on my part, headed off by a kindly anaesthetist, the last thing I remember is having my pathetically inadequate veins insulted by another, less kindly, anaesthetist as he struggled to find an adequate venue for his cannula - now read on…..

A breast lumpectomy operation (or WLE – wide local excision), although a fairly major piece of surgery carried out under a general anaesthetic, is normally carried out as a day operation; once you have come round and had some time in the recovery room you can go home the same evening, all being well, and this is what is planned for me.

It doesn’t work out quite like that.

Although I reported to the hospital at 7.30am, my operation doesn’t take place until late afternoon, and I start swimming back into consciousness as I am being wheeled on a trolley into a ward where I will be staying overnight. And this is where my introduction to the awesome power of pharmaceuticals begins, because for the next 24 hours I am buoyed from the after-effects of the surgery on a wave of - presumably - morphine, blithely unaware of what will hit me once I get home.

There is a big dressing on my chest, but I am feeling perfectly fine and insist on R calling my mother and sister so I can tell them exactly how fine I am because they will be worried (I was, apparently, pretty much incoherent, but extremely cheerful). My surgeon, Mr H, pops in to check on me before going home and I greet him with a beaming smile. After R has gone, I bond with the other inhabitant of the ward, a woman called Sheila whose very complicated mastectomy was the operation before mine, and we sit in our beds chatting until the early hours of the morning, exchanging life stories in that extraordinarily intimate way you can do with complete strangers in adverse circumstances, particularly when you are completely off your face with drugs; every now and then we demand more tea and toast from the nurses who, at about 3am, gently suggest that it might be a good thing for us both to get a little rest now.

Early in the morning Mr H appears again for an informal check on me, before starting work for the day, and says I will be able to go home later in the morning.

Mr H’s aftercare, I have to say, is outstanding, and will remain so in the weeks that follow. Of all the breast surgeons in the world, I’m very glad he was mine. 

Later I receive the official ward round from his registrar, a very good-looking Croatian or Serbian who is flirting with the equally good-looking female doctor who accompanies him. Part of his general charm offensive is to describe us surgically battered female patients as ‘lovely ladies’ which, when you’ve just had your once lovely breast mutilated or removed, is rather adding insult to injury; however, he’s a nice bloke, and a good doctor, and I’m still high from the morphine, so I close my mouth without actually uttering the words ‘Don’t patronise me, you t***er’, which is the response which immediately springs to mind

I’m pronounced fit to go home and a couple of hours later, after the admin is all sorted and various drugs prescribed, am finally allowed to do so. The taxi delivers us back to our little eyrie in Gurkha Towers within ten minutes and R installs me on the sofa with books, magazines, and a range of refreshments.  I call a couple of anxious friends, and then start tweeting, saying that I am safely home, feeling fine, and we are now on to the ‘relaxing and recuperating on the sofa’ part of the proceedings. It’s just like BigSisFo said – having a general anaesthetic is no big deal, the operation has gone fine, and I should be up and about in no time.

I have absolutely no idea, not even an inkling, of what is about to hit me.