Personal Blogs

Well, there's nothing quite like a good night's sleep in your own bed!  Feeling very good today.

The procedure itself on Friday went very well.  A decent sample was collected.  Because of the way it's grown over in to my nose, it turned out when they got there that they didn't actually have to break the barrier in to the brain/cerebro-spinal fluid.  That makes it a much safer surgery (in terms of infection risk, complications, etc) - it also means that technically I haven't undergone brain surgery.  This will make the DVLA easier to deal with, if nothing else!

At the visit last week, the consultant was relaxed and almost unconcerned about what was going on.  While nothing is definite until the pathologist has the cells under the microscope, it's fair to say that from this procedure he saw nothing to make him revise his relaxed and unconcerned position.  He's said to make the follow-up results appointment for four weeks, because there's plenty of calcium to dissolve out of the sample before they can get to the cells.  No guarantees, nothing definite, but essentially things appear to be pointing away from the big scary negative options.

I'm very snuffly - I'm sure it could all be cured with a good nose blow, but I'm not allowed to, I've just got to snuffle and annoy anyone within earshot until it clears itself up.  It's got to the point where I can nearly breathe through my nose now, so getting there.

I have a spectacular bruise on my left wrist from where they had intravenous blood pressure monitoring going on; and a smaller example at left ankle, right ankle, back of right hand and back of left hand where various lines went in.  Couple of sore spots on my head which it took me a silly amount of time to realise was, of course, where they had clamped me in place.

But all in all, it couldn't have been better (not that I'd recommend any part of this experience to anyone!)  Didn't even need any painkillers after the op, and was all set to be going home the same day until my nose decided to bleed a bit so they sensibly kept me for the night instead (which was the original plan - it had just gone so well in the morning that the consultant saw no need to detain me!)

*****

And finally, a little bit of me being me.  I recall being in recovery, coming round from the anaesthetic, where they ask you the questions to ensure you are 'oriented in time and space'.  I got:

Where are you?  Addenbrookes.

What month is it?  May.

Who is the queen?  Queen Elizabeth the Second [presumably I said this so that there was no confusion that perhaps I thought I was coming round from anaesthesia in a state of the art medical facility of the 1560s].

Who is the prime minister? <pause for thought> David Cameron.  Aha, says the recovery room man, nearly got you with that one.  I hope that if there had been a change of government last week there would have been dispensation for a slightly out of date or slow answer!  Mind you, the last time I had a general anaesthetic, it was the day John Major resigned as leader of the conservative party (he stayed as PM, but with the intention to resign if he'd lost the subsequent leadership election).  So next time I have GA, I'm going to try to remember to be cheeky and say who was monarch or PM when I went under, but who knows what's happened in the last four hours?!