Having packed my bag the night before, my alarm went off at 6.30am on Monday to get the kids up and changed for school and everyone out of the house before 7am. My mother in law had offered to have the kids and take them into school for us but my eldest wanted to take me herself and I figured seeing where I was would help settle her mind for the day ahead. She’s massively into medical stuff - loves all the Operation Ouch, Kays Anatomy, Medical Mavericks etc and watching programmes like Surgeons: Life on the Edge - so she gets what’s going on (too much, probably) but this is the first time it has been a ‘real person she knows’ involved so she has been a little bit clingy over the last few days.
Anyway, by some miracle or other, everyone was ready and out of the door by ten past seven and we arrived in Droitwich in good time.
Having registered my arrival, we were told we could go up to the room and get settled in. Massive High 5 for the Healthcare Assistant on the ward who took the kids under her wing from the off and involved them in what was going on: My eldest put the blood pressure monitor on for me and pressed the button to start it, while the youngest measured my ankle to size my compression stockings. Oh the glamour!
After another five minutes or so, I shooed them out the door to get to school with the hope (but not a promise) they’d be able to visit later, once I was out of surgery.
Usual pre-surgery rounds of anaesthetist, surgeon, monitoring etc complete, I was expecting to be hanging around quite a while as my surgeon suggested I was second on the list but would possibly end up third as he was waiting for the rep from Bodycad to arrive. As it happened, things moved much more much more quickly. At 9.30am, the sister and porter arrived to take me down to surgery (good job I’d got changed a few minutes before!) and off we went… I’d forgotten how weird it is climbing up onto the table for your anaesthetic but everyone was genuinely lovely and my last memory was the weird feeling of the anaesthetic working its way up my neck before I fell asleep.
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