It has been four weeks since my surgery and some aspects are going well whilst others that I am struggling with and don’t know how serious it is, who knows as I can’t get to see anyone until 6th November.
The scar on my buttock and thigh is very neat , it has opened up right near the flap by approx 2cm x 1cm, which the district nurse is dressing daily, but the rest of the scar looks pretty great and I am sure in about a year if will be exceptional. Some parts are still numb an other areas are quite tender with nerve endings and when I walk upstairs I get a weird sensation of pulling and twinging I assume it is where the muscle is missing.
I am feeling stronger after not being able to sit for 4 weeks ( that was hell on earth as I couldn’t lie down on my right side for two of those weeks due to the wound and drain site )
The following, I hate to say does show the NHS in a poor light. I love the NHS and it has done a lot for me, but it has also been a nightmare at times, not the people who work there,( although there have been one or two questionable employees whom you wonder what on earth they are doing in a caring profession with the general public)Â just the systems that are in place. They are dreadful with next to no way of getting in touch with anyone who has answers to questions you may have regarding your surgery.
When the wound was checked initially in the earlier days there was some discussion with the district nurses as to whether the flap had opened up slightly, this was a big concern and they rang my GP to see if he would come and take a look. Based on the complex surgery he was reluctant to know what he could do anyway so arranged for me to go to the surgical assessment unit at the Queens Medical Centre. This was utterly awful from start to finish…
- Because I wasn’t allowed to sit at all ( I was 10 days post op) I had to have an ambulance, which I waited for four hours. ( Again all the actual staff were second to none for care, the ambulance men in particular were amazing)
- I was put in a triage room ( this was at about 7pm) no one came to see me for a good 45 minutes, not even to say hello.
- The actual room was not clean. The last photo was of some suspicious droplets from the bed to the toilet.
- I was eventually seen at 1am by the doctor who said the wound was fine. So all that for absolutely nothing, on an uncomfortable trolley bed on my side. I eventually was told by my plastic surgeon that he had explicitly wrote on my notes that if there was any query about the wound I should go to the City hospital wound and dressing unit. !!!!!!!!!. I also needed to wait possibly another 4 hours for an ambulance home. All this being 10 days out from major surgery, again the staff were apologetic but the system was not set up for post surgery patients with possible concerns that need attending to quickly.
- As it happens my wound did open up but not at the flap but just near it so it is fine for district nurses to sort for now. But I started with a different symptom and that was leakage from my lady parts. Was this normal ? what should I do? plastics said they couldn’t deal with it as they didn’t repair that part, but trying to get hold of my colorectal surgeon is something on another level. Unfortunately for me he is semi retired so is not there very often. His secretary emailed him and he said he wanted me in clinic the next week, but as things don’t run smoothly for me, the appointment was made for two weeks instead ( he wasn’t in the trust the week he suggested, you are probably thinking as I was, why was I told he wanted to see me the first week when he actually wasn’t going to be there), his secretary said no one else would be able to see me, ( how does she know this without asking?) and when I asked for her email so that I or district nurse could send some photos she wasn’t exactly happy about it and said she didn’t have one that was secure and gave me an unmanned one from someone who was leaving soon ” But you can’t send photos willy nilly, just this once” yes miss. If there was even a small chance that the surgery hadn’t worked as planned I would have thought they would be fighting over them selves to get me looked at, but alas no.
So as it stands at the minute ( or sits haha) I am waiting to see my surgeon to see if my leaking is normal or not. It certainly feels strange, a bit like it did when I had the fistula so am concerned about the wait, I think there should be someone or some way to get hold of someone quicker if things aren’t necessarily going in the right direction.
