Well, I’m recently home from hospital. It feels like I live there this week. Yesterday morning, I started wondering, ‘should I be nil by mouth?’ noone has mentioned it but perhaps I ought to check before I eat anything. So, I left a couple of messages up at the hospital and one of the breast care nurses called back and said ‘oh yes, usually it’s done under a general anaesthetic’. This contradicted what a friend had told me, who said it was a local, so I was getting confused. Then I called the ward and they said that I probably should be nil by mouth. I said ‘and I will be out tonight won’t I?’ and they said ‘hopefully, but bring a bag just in case’. You think they’d make these things clear when they give you an appointment wouldn’t you?
So, when we arrived at the hospital they (finally) explained that it would be done in theatre under local anaesthetic with a sedative. They said I was nil by mouth just in case there were any complications and they had to use a general anaesthetic. The doctor who was doing the operation came to explain the possible complications, including the fact that occasionally they caused a collapsed lung, so of course I was getting quite nervous at this point, wondering if I was doing the right thing at all. They also said I was definately going to be in overnight, so I had to cancel my plans for today and call my friend Lauren to see if she could pick me up this morning.
At about 5pm they came to take me down to theatre – they rolled me down on my bed. I hopped onto the operating table and they fed me a light sedative through a canular in my hand. Then they covered my face with a little ‘tent’ so I couldn’t see my body, whilst they gave me a local anaesthetic and made an incision by my collarbone. They then fed a line through this and down into my chest. At first they couldn’t get it to feed through so I think I was once again a tricky case, but eventually they got it to work. The whole time they were talking to me and I felt fine – no pain other than the local anaesthetic going in. The line comes out above my nipple and is quite long – it hangs below my belly button. This will now stay in until after I finish chemo in 5 months time. It means that I can have blood taken out of it, and chemo put into it without the need for any more needles.
At about 6.15 I was wheeled back up to my room where dinner was waiting. Kim said I wasn’t half as sedated as he expected as I was quite happy and chatting away. Soon after 8, they came and took me down to x-ray in a wheelchair so that they could x-ray my chest to check it had gone in correctly and had not damaged my lung. Then it was back to bed for the rest of the evening.
Later on that evening, my neck started really hurting where they had made the incision. A couple of tramadol later and I was quite able to go to sleep though. This morning, I had to wait until an oncologist gave my x-ray an all clear so that they could clean and flush the line. Then, about 11am I was free to go, and Lauren arrived and brought me home.
I’m feeling a little tired and sore but altogether not too bad. I’ll rest until tomorrow, when chemo starts all over again.
Amy's BC Blog 