At the Pre-Op I was advised that I would be having a Cone Biopsy and quite a bit of cervix removed, but should be back at work after a week. Whether that is a good thing or not I was undecided - I felt like loosing half a body part should warrant more than 5 days leave!
On the morning of the op I was positively pooing myself - I hate needles, am a massive wimp, and was so scared of the findings. In my little bay I sat in paper pants and watched TV from 7am whilst watching every other woman going down to theatre. Every time a Nurse walked past my heart would skip a beat, but still they would walk on by with another anxious lady in a fluffy dressing gown.
I am the most anxious person in the world and, as sods law would have it, was the last woman to go into theatre that day - 4 hours after arriving!!! I was walked into Theatre and confronted by in excess of 20 people - they had failed to mention that as it was a teaching hospital there would be students observing. Now i know they need to learn, but do they really have to be there when I am awake and aware that in ten minutes time they are going to be looking at my lady garden on a huge 10 foot screen!!!! This, combined with the wait, increased my anxiety to a point where the man with the cannula was coming towards me with an evil look on his face. Of course, I again did the adult thing and cried...oh, and threatened to run!
Although one of the Doctors chose to ignore my threat and still started trying to undress me, another Surgeon saw sense and told everyone to clear off. A nurse held my hand (held me down I should say) and it was agreed it would be in everyone's interests to allow me to have gas to knock me out - the threat of running worked!
As the gas mask was placed over my face I felt an all-over numbness develop followed by a high pitched noise until the next thing i know I was trying to rip my breathing tube out in the recovery room.
I didn't feel too bad and had only been in theatre for 30 minutes, but it felt like forever and I really wanted to go home. As soon as I could they let me go in the luxury of a wheelchair. Unfortunately for everybody else the anaesthetic had sent me a bit loony! With my jogging bottoms pulled up to my bust, and my hoody on back to front, I proceeded to leave the hospital crying that all the fat people got seen first. I then cried that I was left until last because my dressing gown was not fluffy enough, and that they didn't even give me any soup and I was poorly and needed soup. Unfortunately for my Mum and Him, I continued like this for about the next 2 hours, including the hour long journey home, until i eventually fell asleep and gave them some peace.
My recovery was going well until one awful day, the day the smell came! It started normal enough, woke up, got showered, and had a Mac Donald's breakfast (it was a few days after and I was luckily able to drive short journeys). On the way home I thought "hmm, that smells strange". I didn't think much of it until I went to see my friend and as I sat there I realised that it wasn't the smell that had followed me, it was me that smelt! Very embarrassing, but luckily having an infected wound gets priority treatment so a dose of super duper antibiotics were quickly surprised - though I think the Doctor was writing the prescription before I even entered the room as she would have smelt me coming!
So, 3 weeks off work (the infection was nasty), half a cervix, and some looniness, I eventually received my results. I had CIN3 pre-cancerous cervical cells, all removed. Yeah!!!!
