The morning of the lymph node dissection was as straight forward as it comes. I was checked in to the Bath clinic, was shown to my room and given the menu to pre-order that evening’s dinner and also the next days breakfast. Got to love a private hospital! The anaesthetist came round to introduce himself and rattled off a number of questions and then Mr W popped in to say hello. I put my theatre gown on, had my left groin marked with a nice big black arrow and by late morning I was waving goodbye to Kathy as I was wheeled to theatre. Once again, I was perfectly relaxed and comfortable with it all. This time I was actually wheeled directly into the theatre rather than an adjoining waiting room. It was interesting to see it. It was a really big room, very open and extremely bright. There were 3 or 4 people in there with Mr W, as well as the anaesthetist. I was transferred onto the operating table and when everyone was happy that their bit was in order, the anaesthetist did his bit and I was gone. Not dead. Asleep.

I came round in the recovery room several hours later and was told that everything was fine and had gone as expected. I was quite drowsy for an hour or so and I remember the nurse kept having to remind me to breath, which was a little concerning. When they were happy that I was suitably recovered I was wheeled back to my room where Kathy was waiting. The afternoon and evening was quite a blur to me as I seemed to be a lot more affected by the general anaesthetic than I had been for the WLE / SLNB. I  The night was really difficult and uncomfortable too. I woke up several times in a lot of pain and made use of the nurses availability by calling them for more pain killers. I also woke myself up 3 or 4 times by retching and feeling like I was choking, although I wasn’t actually sick at any stage. It was a very disconcerting and uncomfortable feeling and I was glad when morning came round and the choking and sudden rushes of pain seemed to subside.

Mr W was round to see me before 8am on the Friday and was happy with how everything had gone. Kathy arrived with Emma just as Mr W was leaving and I was feeling well enough to really appreciate them visiting. I was still very sore though. My left thigh was heavily strapped and I had 2 tubes coming out of the bottom of the bandaging, each connected into a drainage bag. These drain any blood or lymph fluid out of the body so the leg doesn’t swell. The drains needed to be kept in place until the body naturally stops the flow of blood and lymph fluid from that part of the body. I was told that this process can take anything from 5 days to around 3 weeks.

One of the nurses came to see me and told me I needed to get out of bed and walk a short distance to help prevent any clots or complications. It was hard work. It took me a minute or 2 just to swing my legs over the side of the bed. The plastic drainage tubes felt like the ends of them were digging in to the raw flesh inside of my thigh. That’s because they were! It was really painful and took me a further 5 minutes or so to walk the 5 paces to the bedroom door and back again to bed. That was about as much as I could muster and the nurse seemed happy enough with my efforts. I think she was probably feeling a sorry for me given the pain she could see I was in. The rest of the day wasn’t too bad. I had a few visitors and the painkillers did their job reasonably well.

The drains in my leg were filling up pretty steadily, which I gather was to be expected and the nurses came to check on them every few hours and change the bags as necessary. Come the Saturday morning Mr W was back again and let me know that I could head home if I wanted to. I didn’t. I would have thought that I’d be desperate to get home but I was really comfortable in the Bath Clinic. I was being really well looked after by the nurses who were checking my drains and administering my medication when it needed to be done and I was happy there. The thought of heading home seemed quite daunting at the time. Just the different medication I was on was difficult to keep track of. I had about 3 different painkillers to take, all at different times of the day, in different quantities. One of the painkillers made me feel really sick so I took another pill to overcome that. However, the anti-sickness pill caused bad heart burn so there was another pill to stop that. I was taking a pill to stop the side effects of the side effects of a pill! Whilst the pain was a lot better than it had been the night of the operation, it was still pretty sore and having everything right there suited me just fine. Mr W was more than happy for me to stay so that’s what I did.

I stayed at the Bath Clinic until the Tuesday in the end which meant Kathy and Emma had a few more trips to see me than they would have probably liked but it was good to be looked after properly by the nurses. I had a visit from the my mum, masquerading as the Easter bunny on the Sunday so had enough chocolate to sink a ship and I had plenty of visits from friends and family. My mate Jocky bought in a Domino’s pizza and Geoff arrived with 15 cartons of Chinese takeaway from my favourite restaurant in Bath. He must have spent over £80 on takeaway for the 2 of us! Needless to say, he took a fair amount home with him and his family were eating Chinese for the next few days. The nurses let people come and go as they pleased and were great fun, although Mai Mai, one particular nurse, pinched all my black wine gums but she was so lovely, I let her off.