My surgery started out pretty straight forward, and seemed to go as scheduled. However it lead to a night of a long string of related events. Once I gain consciousness, the first thing was to check out the work of my surgeon. Looking down at my chest things were certainly more plane-like. However there was obvious puffiness in my right breast area. My reactions were to consider one of the following:
- my surgeon had forgotten to remove the right breast
- they had discovered on opening me up further cancer spread and therefore complications with the surgery
- the consent form I signed to have the surgery completed was wrong
On the surgical floor there is continual monitoring which means constant interruptions through the day and night. Result, very little or no sleep.
As we are under a public health system, most hospital accommodation is on a ward - 3-4 beds per room with mixed gender. I was with 3 others so that meant that everything going on with the other 3 become my business whether I wanted it or not. As a result, more interruptions, noise and activity further creating complications for attempts to sleep.
To help manage the physical effects of being cut open, pain medication is provided regularly as a matter of rote. For me, pain medication of any type results in fuzzy brain, no matter how mild the strength. So no pain results in no brain but can help with sleep, however the sleep is drug induced so not very restful.
Over the next hours, the nurses, on-call surgeon and, of course, I waited for the bleeding to stop on its own. In the meantime, the pressure built under my skin on my upper chest and arm pit as the fluid collected internally.
So, by 'lights out' I am building pressure from the ongoing bleeding, aroused every 3-4 hours to check vital signs and in a drugged haziness. Add to that gas and sore throat from being under anesthetic.
By wee hours of the morning, I had lost enough blood that my body went into shock. So added to the above I was dizzy, in a cold sweat and freezing - teeth chattering freezing.
There was a student nurse assigned to me along with the regular nurse. She was great but student means that everything takes that much more time as every procedure is reviewed and questions asked. That meant for the surgery prep - the catheter was attempted - 3 times. I'm all for on the job training so I bit my tongue - likely literally - and 'high fived' her on final successful attempt. Way to go Heather!
Out of surgery and back to my surgical bed by early morning for yet another night in hospital.
So, to summarize the chain of events - (If I could put in a process map I would):
surgery = bleeding = drop in blood pressure
= pain, gas, sore throat
pain = medication = monitoring = no sleep
drop in blood pressure = shock
shock = chills and sweating
bleeding = additional surgery
additional surgery = one more night in hospital
night in hospital = no sleep, more medication
It could almost make 6 months of chemo seem like a breeze!
Next up a few weeks of healing and then we jump on the radiation train.