The Journey to the Hospital on 8th November didn’t go smoothly!

I had to be admitted to hospital for my surgery on 8th Nov 2010, but the surgery was not taking place until 9th November.  The technical reason for that is explained further below. 

Not a good start, 13 years ago today, Chris was driving me to the hospital for my first surgery, the “my big surgery” as I call it. It was “debulking” i.e. get as much as possible. In the end, the liver was left for another day.

I had been working since being diagnosed and was still sending work emails during the journey on an ancient device called a Blackberry! Remember them? Both my thumbs would have been going ten to the dozen! After all, loose ends must be tied up. Ironic given I was about to have 3 feet of small intestine and my ascending colon removed and rejoined

Around 1 mile from the hospital, at a roundabout, someone went into the back of the car. No real damage was done but the shunt caused a bit of a jolt and I had to have a neck and back x-ray on arrival just to be sure.  All was fine. Let’s go!

 

Surgical Prep 8th November

As I said above, I had to be admitted 24 hours before the surgery, this was mainly to start the peri-operative octreotide infusion to de-risk the possibility of ‘hormonal crisis‘ which is a well-known risk with symptomatic NET patients with carcinoid syndrome. I had carcinoid syndrome at diagnosis, and it wasn’t fully under control with daily octreotide.  It’s now just a waiting game, Chris was with me for a while, and I have a TV! 

Shortly after my evening meal, a nurse arrived to hook me up to octreotide on drip.  I had already experienced this prior to a liver embolization a month previously.  But it still amazed me how much octreotide was in one of those cylinders (£££££). 

The other special thing about this surgery was that I was going to be away from work for so long, I had to make my condition public. Prior to that, only a select few had the knowledge.  That was a tricky one for me.