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A hospital corridor - photo not taken at the time this post relates to! |
It was a
Friday when my partner woke me up with a cup of coffee. He didn’t need to
remind me what was special about the day. I was supposed to ring the hospital
before setting out, to check that the bed availability, but I was on the coach to
London long before the Admissions Office opened for the day…
In my last
post, I wrote about my assessment and the Real Life Test that led up to my much-needed
and long-awaited gender reassignment surgery. I must caveat this post, that
follows on from it, by saying that the surgical and post-surgical protocols
have changed since then; for instance, I understand that the current hospital
stay is 6–8 nights, for instance, whereas ‘back in the day’ you went home on
day 12.
I’m not
going to go into gory or prurient detail at all. Anyway:
Friday
Having
reported in, and with my paperwork processed, I was sent for a check-up and an
ECG. I didn’t know then how familiar ECGs would become in later years (that’s
another story altogether and completely unrelated to trans issues…) so this was
a novelty, albeit a novelty with a very serious purpose.
After that,
I went up to the ward that would be my home for the next week and a chunk. The
duty doctor checked that I knew what would be happening and what the risks were
(i.e. he made sure that I was consenting on an informed basis). I had a random lunch — I’d obviously not been
there the previous day to order from the menu! I can’t remember what lunch or dinner were. I do remember that they were the last solid
food I’d be allowed for a week.
I was
introduced to the lady who had had the same surgery a few days earlier; she was
making a good recovery but was not yet allowed to get out of bed, and I met a
couple of other patients who were there for other surgeries. It happened to be November 5th, so later on
some of us bonded over cups of tea and a grandstand view of fireworks across
London from the day room (we were on the 8th floor). We could see all the way
from Fulham to Canary Wharf.
The
Weekend
I was
allowed hot drinks on the Saturday, but no food and on the Sunday, I was on
water only. My tummy needed to be truly
and properly empty in the days following surgery, and in the words of the
immortal Captain Jean-Luc Picard I was given something to <shudders
delicately at the memory> ‘make it so.’
I had given
up smoking a few weeks beforehand to make my recovery easier, but I have to
confess that I’d bought a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter on my way to
the hospital(!). I was nervous enough to smoke a couple of them on the Friday
and Saturday, and they did help to calm my nerves. This was in the days when
not only could you smoke indoors in pubs and restaurants, but you could even
smoke in certain areas in hospitals! From a modern perspective, even I find
that strange. I finally quit smoking for good in the Noughties, by the way.
Monday
This was the
big day. After I was woken up and had a drink of water, it was time for my
pre-med, and I was told that I was fully bedbound from that moment. My
nerves had disappeared by now. Shortly before I was taken to theatre, one of
the friends I’d made over the weekend popped her head around my door to wish me
luck and told me that I’d feel like a whole new woman afterwards. I had to
smile —but she told me later that she’d realised why I was there and that she
wished she could have taken the words back as soon as she’d said them in case
she had offended me. She hadn’t. She’d made my day.
Up in the
Theatre anteroom, the anaesthetist slipped a needle into my hand and I felt an
icy-cold rush up my arm, then I woke up with the sun streaming in through the
window. You’d be right in surmising that there was an interval between those
two things! I was warm and I was comfy,
I didn’t feel groggy at all, there was no pain, and I assumed it was the next
morning. I was quite amused when I found out it was still Monday and, pleased
that everything had happened, at peace with my body. I soon realised that the relevant part of me was
completely, tightly, bound with dressings.
One of the
nurses checked that I was awake and passed on good wishes from my boyfriend and
friends on the ward. That’s about all I remember from that day.
Tuesday —
Friday
This was
long before the days when everyone had a mobile phone, and we didn’t have a
phone at home or one available for patient use if you couldn’t get to the
phones by the lift. The nurses told me that my boyfriend had rung every day
that he couldn’t get to the hospital, and that my mother had rung as well; my
boyfriend and I had discussed when to tell mum, and we’d decided that as she
didn’t approve and would be worried and upset, it would be kindest to tell her
afterwards (I said this to her when she and my sister came for a cup of tea
after I’d got home, and she agreed that yes, that had probably been the best
approach to take).
I continued
to recover during the week, but I was not allowed out of bed at all and had to
remain on my back day and night. Hospital
radio and Radio 2 got me through this time — I tried to read the paper a couple
of times but I did not have the concentration. I remember seeing Concorde among the aircraft
coming over on its way into Heathrow very early one morning. Concorde was lit
up underneath and easy to recognise, I’ve no idea what the other aircraft were.
We stepped
my painkillers down pretty quickly and without any issues, and I had a course
of antibiotics to ward off any infections. It’s fair to say that the whole
process was a lot less painful than I had anticipated. I was rubbish at
sleeping while I was in hospital; I wondered whether that was because I wasn’t
doing anything to get tired.
I have one
rather bizarre memory: Certain sounds — resonating heating pipes, clattering
trolleys etc turned into music for a day or so!! Polyphonic, instrumental,
choral… I gather that that can happen
when your body has been through something major, but I’d not heard of it
before. It had never happened to me
before and has never happened to me since. I watched Touching the Void (though my
fingers at one bit that I couldn’t bear to watch but couldn’t *not* watch) and
read the book and I remember Joe Simpson relating that he was hearing Brown
Girl in the Ring as he was crawling back to Base Camp. I was certainly
warmer, more comfortable and in better shape than Joe but I know exactly what
he was talking about.
Although I
still wasn’t allowed to eat, I wasn’t actually hungry - which was just as well,
because when I’m under the weather everything tastes very strange anyway. Even water tasted strange. On the Thursday evening, a nurse came to
refill my water jug and then said “I tell you what, I’ll make you a nice hot
cup of tea. How does that sound?” Reader, it sounded wonderful. It tasted wonderful as well. I was allowed more tea on the Friday, and in
the evening I had a cup of minestrone soup. That was a new variety for me, and
I truly savoured it.
Saturday
Quite a big
day! After a cup of tea and a pot of yoghurt, it was time to remove my
dressings (including my, errm, internal packing) and catheter, which was duly
done, and I was gifted some aftercare items. If you’ve been there, you’ll know
what I’m talking about! I was told I could now get up and walk around, but that
I would need to take it gently. They
were right about that; I managed to sit up and had to hold onto the bedhead for
the next half an hour. If I’d actually tried to stand up at that point I’d have
fallen flat on my face! I managed, a while after that, first to stand up and
then, a little later still, to walk to the window and back — a round trip of
some 15 feet, at a guesstimate. I needed
to lie down for half an hour to recover. One thing stands out in my mind — I could see
a particular tree from the window; before I’d been confined to bed, it was
russet of leaf but the leaves hadn’t fallen. Now, a week later, the tree was
bare and there was a perfect disc of leaves, matching the tree’s canopy circumference,
on the ground. There must have been a couple of very cold but still nights
during the week. More prosaically, I’d managed to wee by the allotted time of
11:30 which was one of the targets.
Lunch was a
sandwich! Real, solid, actual food! And, as an extra treat, my boyfriend
arrived to spend the afternoon with me. He’d anticipated that I’d be pretty
weak; I’m not sure how I fared against what he’d expected. He’d also restarted
smoking so we laughed with each other and then we very slowly walked down the
corridor to an area you wouldn’t find indoors nowadays.
Sunday —
Tuesday
Recovery
continued, slowly but surely. I learned to use my aftercare goodies. I got a
little more stamina/mobility back as (and no doubt because) I got to eat some
more solid food. On the Monday morning the surgeon stopped by to see how I was
doing before he went up to theatre for his next masterpiece.
My sense of
taste returned apace with my recovery, and I remember that the burger I had for
dinner on the Monday was absolutely wonderful. I was definitely starting to
feel better in general terms.
Tuesday,
just over a week after my surgery, was the day I went home. My boyfriend and a
good friend with a car came to collect me for the 80-odd mile journey.
Stepping out
of the hospital exit, the cold evening air tasted like nectar. Yes, London’s
city air!! Our friend had come straight from work, so we stopped off for
something to eat on the way home; I had one heck of a job getting up off the comfy
chair I’d been sitting in to leave afterwards, I didn’t have much by way of strength or
muscle tone at that point.
Home felt
almost strange but very welcome. The dogs (two border collies) were allowed to
welcome me home with the stern instructions ‘sit’ and ‘nicely’, then it was
back to bed for a solid night’s sleep and the start of a good recovery at home.
Overall,
there was a lot less pain than I’d expected, but I hadn’t known I wouldn’t be
allowed to eat for a week or that I’d be quite so weak afterwards. There was
less access to information then than there is now; this was pre-internet and
pre-smartphones. There was no social
media where you could ask the hive mind about surgery and recovery. I had never
met anyone who’d completed everything, so no-one had been able to tell me what
to expect.
It took me a
good few weeks to be properly mobile, and it was a couple of months before I
was fit for work. I’ll tell you one thing, though — the relief at finally
having the right anatomy was amazing. Nothing
beats that feeling!!
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