Time For Surgery

03/03/2019

I woke from a restless sleep on the Sunday morning and was introduced to my anaesthetist, surgeon and his team. They explained that the Stoma would have to be constructed in order to rest my bowel for a 2nd operation further down the line. The anaesthetist explained the procedure of putting me to sleep and managing my breathing and blood levels during the operation. A drain would also be fed into the lower right side of my abdomen from the left which would allow the septic liquids to be drained post operative. This would also involve 4 intravenous cannulas, 1 arterial line and a catheter. Further to that, the surgeon advised on what they have planned to do. Because I have Crohn's Disease, it had spread across my bowel (where the small meets the large) and inflamed to a point where it had perforated, this would explain all of the pain I had encountered. After all of this had been explained to me, I signed my consent forms and I was taken down to theatre.

When I arrived at theatre (3), I was again greeted by the team and confirmed multiple times that it was my signature on the consent forms. With that, I was in the hands of the anaesthetist and held a mask over my mouth whilst they injected the anaesthetic to send me off to sleep. Because I was very unsettled, he told me to think of happy thoughts and I did just that.

As soon as I drifted off I was coming round again in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), it felt that quick! In total, I was in surgery for around 3-4 hours.

Coming round from the operation was very painful and I was on a PCA machine with morphine attached. This meant I was able to administer myself with this as much times as I required with the press of a button, and believe me, from what I could remember, it worked! I couldn't move from the surgery as my core had been sliced through, this also meant my diaphragm was in the firing line which made breathing very difficult; but with the help of oxygen this was managed.

A few hours later in the ICU and I was stable enough to be transferred back to ward 6 for my recovery to begin.