So Many Surgeries.

Surgery is never easy to go through; a hospital stay, pain, recovery, risks, complications etc. It’s even more stressful that I have had such severe reactions to anaesthetics which complicates things even further, meaning an intensive care bed is always required afterwards.

It’s just happened that, once next week is over, I’d have had three surgeries in the last three weeks of February. Last week I had to go through a cyst removal, this week I had a port-a-cath insertion on Monday and next week I’ve got my MPFL Reconstruction.

For a ‘healthy’ person, the port-a-cath insertion can be a day case, but I was told I’d have to stay atleast one night in intensive care for observations. I had quite a lot of complications afterwards; sickness, pain, I was totally out of it on the medications, and I ended up spending two nights in intensive care. Even the smallest of surgeries/ procedures which other people can just bounce back from really knock me sideways and take me a long time to get back to my ‘normal from.

When you suffer from chronic pain conditions, acute pain can be extremely difficult to manage. I have Fentanyl patches and take sub lingual Fentanyl for my everyday pain from dislocations etc, so this means when they try to use it or similar to control my post-op pain, I have a high tolerance to it. I also bruise very easily, take a long time to heal and am at an increased risk of infection, so sterile dressing of the wound is even more important that it’d otherwise be.

I’m home now, I’ve had my cyst removed, my new port-a-cath is in situ, and I have probably the most major of the three surgeries, my ligament reconstruction, on Wednesday which I’m being admitted on Tuesday for. I feel so weak at the moment, but once this coming week is out of the way (as difficult as it may be), I’m hoping I can move forwards and things will stabilise… at least I can hope.