Surgery #2
Here’s how 2019 is going so far.
I am currently recuperating from my second surgery in the space of five months, aka The One Where They Chop Out a Chunk Of My Liver.
In New Zealand, if you have to have liver surgery, you have to have it in Auckland. That’s where the Hepato-Pancreatico-Biliary Upper Gastrointestinal Unit is, where the extremely wonderful surgeons who operate on problematic livers (and gall bladders and pancreases and other bits in that region) reside. On Monday 4 February I flew to Auckland with my Mum and was admitted to the surgical ward that same day — early the next morning they took me into theatre and performed an apparently textbook perfect liver resection.
My first surgery, back in September last year, was supposed to take about 4 hours but actually lasted about 7 — not because anything went terribly wrong, but because it was a more involved surgery than it initially appeared it would be. I had three significant procedures performed at once: removal of my rectum (where Chunt Gudley, that asshole, had set up shop); creation of a stoma (pulling a loop of my colon up and through an opening in my abdomen), and my “Barbie Butt” surgery — the wild card in the mix, because they weren’t initially planning to make my stoma permanent, but when they decided it would be a better life for me if it was, they had to sew up my now defunct butthole (and honestly, it still weirds me out that I’m…smooth back there).
In marked contrast Surgery #2 was a really straightforward operation with only one objective: chop out that bad cancer spot on my liver. Because even my broken down body can’t be a petty bitch all of the time, the position of the tiny tumour was pretty much in the easiest and most convenient place for surgeons to access and remove, making this operation essentially a walk in the park for my very skilled and amazing doctors.
I think they completed it in less than the 4 hours they told me it would take. I remember waking up from the anaesthetic and asking what time it was — expecting to have lost an entire day like with the last surgery, but it was only lunchtime.
And apparently, as well as the operation being fast, it was a raging success. The spot of cancer sitting there on my liver, which had been starting to cause a persistent deep, stabbing ache in my side, has been removed, along with about a centimetre margin of healthy, cancer free tissue around it. Clean margins. Some people like the sound of lilting phrases like “cellar door” or pretty words like “flutter” or “oscillate”. For me, though, right now, there’s no phrase more beautiful than “clean margins”.
I now have three more scars to add the constellation of shiny purple marks on my belly; the small shiny purple scar just above my bellybutton from last time has been extended to about 7cm long (they had to cut me open a little bit to get the chunk of liver OUT of me). I’m also COVERED in bruises thanks to the blood thinning drug they injected me with (to prevent post surgery blood clots). My stomach is kind of a lurid yellow, I have big blossomy bruises everywhere I had a line (though I was only in hospital for a couple of days, I somehow managed to accumulate IV lines in both arms and hands).
I was discharged from hospital after only one full day of recovery, because this time round, there were no pesky complications and I am a MODEL patient. (I was up and walking around the afternoon of my surgery, something I definitely did NOT achieve last time round). My surgery was on Tuesday morning, I had Wednesday in hospital, and Thursday they were like “You are healing perfectly and way too well to be in hospital, go home!”
So here I am, at home. Today — just over a week out from surgery — is the first day it hasn’t felt like my poor swollen liver is hitched on my ribs (an intense, sharp pain on every intake of breath) and is the first day I have been able to stand upright, not shuffling hunched over clutching my insanely bloated abdomen like some kind of creepily pregnant octogenarian. Both of those are REALLY good signs that things are healing well, and also explain why I was so tired and woozy yesterday: my body was working overtime to heal me.
Recovery from general anaesthesia is also part of the fun (and I’m using that word loosely). Most people know that you get anaesthetic to be “put to sleep” for surgery, so you can be operated on without feeling it. But general anaesthesia is not really like being put to sleep at all; it’s more like being put into a reversible coma. Lights off, lights on. General anaesthesia works on your central nervous system (nobody really understands exactly HOW, only that it does work) to effect/interrupt a bunch of processes to ensure the patient
- stays unconscious for the procedure
- doesn’t feel the pain of the procedure while it is happening
- loses muscle reflexes that would make operating difficult (e.g. loss of laryngeal reflex means a tracheal tube can be inserted into the patient’s throat while unconscious)
- doesn’t remember the procedure (if you’ve ever had twilight sedation, you will know what it’s like to be awake for a procedure and yet not be able to recall anything that happened).
The whole lights off, lights on reversible coma aspect of having general anaesthetic explains why there’s an entire seperate field of medicine just to deal with anaesthesia — you have specialist doctors, anaesthesiologists who look after you and make all the decisions about what kind of anaesthetic cocktail you need, as well as monitoring how it affects you — your heart, your respiration, your brain. One of the last things I remember before I was knocked out this last time was having electrodes stuck to my temples to monitor my brain activity, electrodes stuck all around my left boob and in my armpit to monitor my heart, while my wonderful anaesthesiologist explained that once I was out, she was gonna insert a needle into my arm to directly monitor my blood pressure.
But because all the vital systems of your body kind of…power down, when you are put in what is basically an induced coma, coming out of anaesthesia is kind of like your body powering all those vital systems back up, bringing everything back online. Sometimes things get “reset” when they are switched off and need a bit of time, or a nudge, to come right. Think of when there’s a power cut. The lights come back on fine, usually, but your alarm clock resets itself to blinking 12:00. That’s your body the hours and week or so after anaesthesia, and it sucks. It’s the reason they won’t let you leave hospital until you have completed a checklist of things (have you peed? Good, kidneys are back online. Have you pooped? Sweet, your digestive system is up and running). For me, anaesthetic does some hard reset on my brain and makes me CRAZY EMOTIONAL for a while, even after every other system has come back online. We’re talking weeping at terrible soap opera melodrama or hysterically laughing at a meme my boyfriend texted me, until I start crying at how much I love him for knowing me so well.
All in all, though, it’s a pretty positive start to the year. I’m healing fast. I got a part-time job that I start really soon, which I’m really looking forward to — it’s been too long that I’ve been languishing at home and only interacting with medical personnel. I’m excited about getting back into the real world, and feeling a little bit normal again.
