This blog will be short as I am still confined to my hospital bed. It is now Wednesday, and while I’m sure I may get out before Friday, if I’m going to put out something, I need to write it now. This is my first time writing my blog on my iPad—actually, a lie; I’m trying to dictate.
I have given up on the dictation, not even a paragraph. I feel like the two Scotsmen in the sketch, who try to get the speech recognition lift to understand the floor they want to go to in vain due to their accent.
It was no small surprise that on Thursday, 12th June, I received a call to come to the hospital for surgery on the following Monday at Coimbra University Hospital. My surgeon had previously suggested a wait-and-see approach unless my next awaited CT scan indicated otherwise. This was the case, and on reviewing the scan, it was decided to operate on my stomach to remove any tumours and at the same time repair a stomach hernia which I developed following the emergency appendicitis surgery. During that surgery, they also removed a tumour being identified as a recurrence of my leiomyosarcoma cancer.
As always, the case, Rosanne and I discussed the merits of having the surgery, especially with the knowledge that the cancer in my stomach was the same as the one which eventually killed my sister, although not in her stomach. It is all about the quality of life. Our feeling is that if we can still do things and look forward and plan to do those things together with a reasonable quality of life, we should always consider intervention in whichever form offered. Here in Portugal the doctors and surgeons are always positive, and my gut feel is that they will treat you until your last breath to the best of their ability. Nonetheless, they freely discuss with you the pros and cons despite their inherent positivity.
Therefore on the following Monday I found myself in the hospital, denied food or drink until and beyond the surgery to take place the next day. Perhaps I should mention by bullet point my main worries about undergoing surgery. With most surgeries, pain is a given.
Cost is not a factor as it’s free.
The recovery room is my least favourite place, where you can hear the wails, groans and sometimes screams of sufferers.
The machines I can bear now, I understand now that the continued buzz or alarm going off does not mean you’re dying or dead. Rather you have probably knocked out some piece of apparatus or your drip has run out or some other minor such thing.
Following my last emergency surgery, I suffered from hallucinations. I think this was due to the closeness of a succession of anaesthetics. So I wanted to avoid this to ensure I went into surgery well rested, lack of sleep causes anxiety.
“Lying immobile in a hospital bed allows you too much time thinking about the unknown. You need to remind yourself the unknown is generally much worst than the actual event.” - Peter McSporran
The worst is the boring stay in the hospital, where a comfortable bed quickly becomes uncomfortable.
“I don't care how nice a bed is, too much time in it, and it's terrible” - My American son-in-law Nathan
Acknowledge that there will be pain and that you must take a stoic attitude to deal with it.
Recovery and the slow progress to full mobility are frustrating. In stomach surgery, this can take several months.
All of these are underpinned by the concern of the extra burden I would add to Rozanne. Hospital visits, anxiety while I am there and probably the worst part nursing a grumpy bugger during recovery.
“If anything is worth it to you and importantly, your family, then you must fight for it. If you’re not willing to fight for it, you don’t deserve it or it is obviously just not worth it to you.” - Peter McSporran
The operation went very well, so well I went straight to the ward from recovery, dodging high care. High care is as bad as recovery for a cacophony of suffering noises. They had discovered two tumours and a lesion which they removed along with some of my intestines to try and remove all. If I keep going like this I will soon have so little intestines it will probably make sense to just put my food into the toilet rather than eating it.
I was hoping to be home to see the rugby by Saturday, but my surgeon was taking a cautionary approach. As he was away for the weekend, he recommended I stay in until Monday. He was concerned about infection of the wound from the hernia repair web, which had already caused some bruising. See picture. I was upset at the time, but with hindsight, I am lucky he recommended this despite my protestations.
I should mention this time I was given the medical equivalent of a pet rock, a PICO 7. This is a vacuum pump attached to a special seven-day sealed wound dressing. The PICO 7 part is a small electric pump connected to the dressing by means of its vacuum line, which is about a meter long. A rock is a much more pleasant companion I can assure you. PICO 7 continually gets its lead wrapped around not just your body but also your drip lines and monitor cables. Mine irresponsibly also went swimming down the toilet bowl a couple of times. Further it had the added bad habit of buzzing and vibrating like an electric phone each time it pumped, which was every couple of minutes. This was an added distraction against sleep especially as it was inclined to snuggle under your body at night, normally in the small of my back. Monday came, and I was to be released but not before PICO 7 was removed.
On removing the large dressing that goes with the damn thing, the doctor carrying this out immediately said there was a problem. Photos were taken and shared culminating in the arrival of a couple of senior doctors who unpicked some of my staples to probe and see what was going on. A large accumulation of clotted (old blood). After removing some of this hematoma they decided they required my surgeon's guidance. He was busy operating at another hospital and would only finish late Monday night so definitely no release that day as planned. They also immediately stopped me from eating and drinking in case I needed to return to the operating theatre. Déjà vu without the pain to my prostate operation.
The next day, my surgeon attended me, opening the wound slightly to remove a large amount (500mm) of clotted blood including unfortunately some fresh blood. The cause of this was down to the web which had also caused some superficial bruising. It is now Wednesday and having seen my surgeon first thing, he will return to do further investigations this afternoon resulting in my stay for at least another night. The next day he returned and to both his and my amazement the bleeding had stopped and no further blood clots were evident. Quick call to Rosanne for a hot extraction and home. Phew.
On Thursday morning, I went for my blood and urine tests for my routinue six-month review with my GP, which is next week. I do this by going to a private local medical analytical clinic with the prescription for the tests to be paid for by the Government. Normally, it takes about ten to fifteen minutes, and there is rarely any queue. While in the hospital, my blood was monitored every day, but despite this, we stuck to the routine. The main concerns are my diabetes and my PSA count. Once again, my blood glucose was monitored while in hospital, the one unknown being my PSA. As I have said previously, before surgery, they thought my prostate cancer was still restricted to my prostate, but the biopsy following my surgery indicated it had spread to my seminal vesicles. The operation was some eight months ago, and to date, my PSA numbers are negible. Good news.
It is now Thursday, and I have just watched the Agricultural Recovery and Compensation (ARAC) AGM. When I heard the new president, Liam Philp, of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) speak, I thought him both intelligent and enlightened. He asked for the replacement of the ARAC board, and in doing so, it was proven he had the support to do so much, to the surprise of some of the long-standing board members, not least the chairman Patrick Ashton. I was shocked to hear him say that in the past year, ARAC had only met as a board once. If ARAC was not driving our battle for compensation, who the hell was? My dear friend Suzie Heyns seemed to be one of the main activists in implementing the legal and popular coup with her holding enough proxies to guarantee this change. Many new, young and old faces. Sadly, the outgoing chair was totally unprepared for events, along with the past CFU president, who was unintelligible on the live stream. Pat's closing remark disingenuously was, that despite him being on the board of ARAC for many years, they, the outgoing board, did not know proxies could be used. If they had known, they could have held their positions, he said. This is a sad testament to the ability of those that we thought were fighting our corner. If they could not defend their own corner, how could they defend ours?
In saying this in my mind there is no doubt that John Laurie and Patick Ashton are honourale men with integrity who worked tirelessly on our behalf. I think they were hoodwinked by members of the steering committee(CSC) whose motives were driven by their self-proclaimed importance, avarice and self-interest by being not negotiators but messengers of the government. In essence, they became the marketing team on behalf of the Government in the promotion of the defunct Global Compensation Deal(GCD).
"It is very hard for good men to see the bad in others. Their trust will always be exploited by those that have little integrity but sell themselves as being indespensible to the common cause." - Peter McSporran
The CSC did achieve two things: They divided the Title Deed Holders and stopped interim payments to the needy under the guise of instigating the GCD.
What has been achieved this week indicates that a new proactive team is running the CFU and can reunite all TDHs in our common cause.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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