It was 7.30am on Thursday 12th December, and the start of the longest 24 hours of my life.
I should have been dressed in the surgical gown by now, but I was putting that moment back - cocooned in the sanctuary of my private room, wearing soft newly bought Cath Kidson pyjamas and accompanied by Helen Fielding’s now 50 year old Bridget Jones in my earplugs.
I was smiling.
A cup of tea arrived just ahead of Professor Thompson’s entrance, who was once again dressed in green scrubs.
“You OK?” he asked, as he grabbed a chair opposite mine.
“Yes, quite good” I said, “Ready, I think. What time do you think I’ll be in?”
“About 12.30, it’s dependent on Pete as he’s got to fit in two operations this morning”
I felt familiar with ‘Pete’, though I’d never met him, which felt odd now as it was his name against all of the most likely risks that Thompson ran through again. ‘Pete’ was to be the ENT surgeon and a specialist in neck oncology. It would be his role to provide ‘access’ through the neck to present the aneurysm to the vascular surgeon.
“He will enter the neck and peel away the nerves as he goes in. The nerves may be stuck together, particularly around the throat and that’s where there is the highest risk of serious damage, as we discussed last time”.
Post Op, my Dad would speak to a plastic surgeon who specialised in neck operations and his quote now sticks in my mind:
"Did you say they removed it from her Carotid? Christ - That's tiger country!"
Unaware of this analogy at the time, I sat there calmly. Interjecting with a question occasionally, but mostly just listening and absorbing as Professor Thompson reiterated all of the risks we’d previously spoken about and then introduced a few more that he hadn't mentioned until now:
“He’ll cut through the main nerve to your face, and so you’ll lose feeling here” He pointed to the chin area and right hand side of my face.
“It’s a bigger deal for men who have to shave!” He said.
“You’ll also have a droopy right shoulder from the nerve damage”
“I might or I will definitely have a droopy shoulder and numb face?”
“Er.. I'd say definitely”
I breathed in slowly, but it was what it was. There was nothing to fight; nothing that was in my control to change. I stayed relaxed, drinking the new detail in.
“What stitches will you be using”? I asked when he seemed to be finally running out of damage expectations.
“Probably clips! Pete will probably want to use them in case you get a blood clot just behind the skin. Clips allow us to re-open the wound easily.
“Will I have to come back to hospital to have them taken out?" I asked
“Either here or your GP’s. You’ll need to get them out in about 10 to 12 days’ time”
Hmm, Christmas eve I calculated.
“Pete will probably start the incision in front of your ear here, and then run up the face, over the back of your ear and down the neck along the crease line.”
I paused just a little bit, it was the first time he mentioned the cut along the front of my face.
“So how long do you think the scar will be?”
“Not too bad, depends on the location of the aneurysm. We can see a lot from the CT scan, but we can’t work out the orientation of the swelling, if it’s close to the skin then your scar will be pretty small and discreet, but if it’s inwards towards your throat, then Pete will have to come down lower towards your collar bone.”
“How likely do you think it is that you’ll have to use vein from my groin to stitch the artery up again?” I asked
“About 50:50, I reckon. Also, when you come round you will have a sore bloody nose as the anaesthetist will need to put the airway through there. Normally he’d feed it through your mouth, but we need your throat to be clamped shut whilst we work around it.
“Right, sore nose. How long might that hurt for?”
“Just a few days.”
“Fine!” I replied.
“If all goes well, you’ll just need a few days post ICU in here, but your family need to understand you’ll need complete rest after that at home.“
“Good!” I said, “It’s just that if everything did go really well, I’d love to see my son in his nativity play next Tuesday.”
“Right!” he replied, “best wear a big scarf to that then.”
Sensing he was agitating to leave, I shook his hands, and with a turn of his head, he was off to see the next patient.
Within a couple of minutes a more junior doctor came into the room with a clipboard, biro and black marker pen.
“Are you happy that the surgeon ran through all the risks of your operation?” he asked.
“Oh yes” I replied. “I can’t imagine he left anything out!” I said, picturing him doing a final brainstorm of every possible risk with colleagues before he’d entered the room.
“Good, can you sign here?”
I immediately obliged.
“It’s the right side of your neck isn’t it?”
As I confirmed this was the case, I was asked to unbutton the top buttons of my pyjamas so that he could draw a large black arrow on my chest pointing to the right hand side of my neck with his marker pen.
My God, I thought, they don’t ever get the wrong side do they?
With the signature and black ink dispensed, he was off with a clipped ‘Good Luck’. And on the return swing of the door, a stoutly nurse entered with a neatly folded stack in her hands.
She asked in her Jamaican accent: “You not showered yet darling?”
I’d seen the sign on the bathroom door instructing me to take the large bottle of red antiseptic liquid and scrub myself the night and morning before theatre.
“Er… no, well I only got the bed late last night". I replied.
“Well, here’s a fresh surgical gown, towel and another bottle of antiseptic. You need to scrub hard, right. Want some help in the shower?”
“No no, I’m fine, I’ll go and do it right now.”
As she left the room, I pulled the green curtain around the windowed door, and took the crisp package in between my hands and entered the bathroom, wondering if prisoners went through a similar procedure when they entered jail.
The thought of skiing now propelled me back to March 1995, and the foolish ski jump that as University friends we had spied from the chairlift going up a peak in Les Arcs at the British University Ski Championships. I was next to my new friends Claire Castell and Ginger Nic. Nic had turned to me, cajoling somewhat:
"Soph, you're not going to try that jump up on the right are you?"
I had watched as a pro skier spun his skis to the left and back again, landing his jump perfectly as he plunged into powder below. I sized it up, reasoning that even if I took a big wipe out, it was soft powder, and what was the worst that could happen? I had pulled my tongue out as I turned back towards Nic on my left. I was the 'fresher' amongst them, eager to impress. Well I didn't want to say 'no'.
I was the only girl to dare attempt the drop that day, just behind ‘Jez’, so nick named because he was the spit of Jeremy Guscott. Jez had gone first, just dropping out of view and into whiteness. 30 seconds later I could make him out again much lower down this time, his trouser seat covered in snow where he had touched down. When he raised his pole I followed without pause, but I was only able to gauge the distance of the drop once I was on the precipice. Looking down as I fell through air, my body had frozen, and my knees locked in position as astonishing fear and shock took over my body, with the ground getting closer. The snow was soft on landing but my body was stuck in a rigid tuck position, and as first skis, then my bum hit the hard stuff underneath, my knees had shot up into my chin, which must have caused by head to fly backwards. I’d picked myself up and received the plaudits from the chairlift, before making my way back down the mountain gingerly. I was the talk of the bar scene that night. But the next morning I would go in search of a neck brace.
Even on ski trips today my body still remembers the pain and stiffness in my neck and back during the endless coach journey back from the Alps to Bristol the next day. I have avoided ski jumps ever since that trip.
I was twenty. Young and careless.
I could never have envisaged that I would be standing in front of a hospital mirror contemplating the implications of that jump nearly 19 years later, with a cheeky toddler and a gorgeous 6 month old baby at home. And even if that incident was the cause of the aneurysm - the ticking time-bomb in my neck that the surgeons were about to attempt to diffuse. Well even now I couldn't muster the feeling of regret. Daring to do that jump was part of who I was back then.
Back in my hospital shower, if the water had been about 5 degrees hotter, then I might have stood there until the porters came to take me to theatre a few hours later. I would have liked the heat of a steamy shower to wipe out any thoughts, to cleanse them; much like the Atlantic does as it crashes over my head in the surf. I wanted to close my eyes and feel the seabed under my feet, but I couldn’t conjure up that feeling in the luke warm shower. The only place I could throw my mind was the potential writing of this blog, so I walked across to the chair in the corner, picked up my iPhone and captured the scene. It was only then that I realised that the black arrow had mostly disappeared with the antiseptic scrubbing.
Just after I returned to my arm chair, this time wearing my surgical gown with red scrubbed neck and body, my parents arrived. Conversation flitted around – I relayed the conversation with Professor Thompson, including the advice that they really shouldn’t hang around the hospital during the operation. We talked about their lovely bed and breakfast on Wimbledon Common and aware that Alex was on his way in, we said our goodbyes. I went back for a second hug with my Dad, but this time he gave me a stronger bear like embrace, like the ones he used to give me as a child. 'Tighter' I would say.
Ahead of Alex’s arrival, I passed the time by listening to Ben Howard’s soothing guitar chords from my red and black Dr Dre, giant headphones, - much like Usain Bolt prepares for the 100m. There were two successive tracks that had got under my skin in the run up: ‘The Fear’, followed by ‘Keep your head up’. I loved how the guitar would crescendo after the chorus and Ben's rasping voice and the drum beat would rouse me into a faster paced run on a jog. But more than that, the lyrics resonated with my inner thoughts:
‘I’ve been worried…. that my time is a little unclear..
I’ve been worried…… that I’m losing the ones I held dear,
I’ve been worried…. that we all live our lives, in the confines of fear'
And then just as those words would begin to get into my psyche, the guitar strumming of the next song soothes and transports me to the surf where Ben describes his soul searching. And if I was running fast with the pheromones pumping, from the end of ‘The Fear’ then I’d get the heart rate back down again dropping to a happy gentle jog to these lyrics:
'With the strength of a turnin' tide
Oh the wind's so soft on my skin,
The sun so hard upon my side.
Oh lookin' out at this happiness,
I search for between the sheets
Oh feelin' blind and realise,
That All I was searchin' for was me.
Keep your head up, keep your heart strong.
No, no, no, no.
Keep your mind set, keep your hair long.
keep your head up, keep your heart strong.
keep your mind set in your ways, keep your heart strong.
I saw a friend of mine the other day,
And he told me that my eyes were gleamin'.
Oh I said I had been away, and he knew,
Oh he knew the depths I was meanin'.
And it felt so good to see his face,
Or the comfort invested in my soul.
Oh to feel the warmth of a smile,
When he said "I'm happy to have you home.
Ooh I'm happy to have you home.
Keep your head up, keep you heart strong.
Keep your mind set in your ways,
Keep your heart strong.'
As I listened to those words a video arrived from Alex on my iPhone of Barnaby dancing in front of Harriet in her high chair, both were in fits of giggles, a messy breakfast scene played out behind them as Alex joined them, laughing back into the camera.
I smiled at this happy gaggle before letting the first tear since Monday and the last tear until church on Christmas day, roll down my cheek. I reached for the sealed letter that Alex had given to me the night before, the one that I’d resisted opening in the middle of the night. On the front he suggested that I might want to save it until after the op. Wondering if that would be possible, I opened it tentatively, read the first line and feeling more tears arriving, I put it back into the envelope to carry out the instruction as Alex intended. I didn’t want to get emotional again.
So when Alex arrived in his cycling gear, we kept our last exchange upbeat. In fact before we’d managed to get into any detail, the porter team arrived to take me down to the anaesthetist' room, connected to theatre by a sliding door.
It was 11.30am, and I felt Alex’s warm lips on mine as he sneaked in a quick kiss, before looking back at him from the moving bed. I called out a funny cheesy quote that Coach Taylor gets his American Football school team to say before a match in Friday Night Lights (our favourite TV series).
We both smiled and I sat up on my elbows as the porter team raced me towards the lifts. Ironically, it felt like my Birthday or Christmas Day or something, I felt excited that things were finally in motion, and as the team around me shared a private joke, I closed my eyes and prayed that I would be OK.
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Next up ‘ICU (Intensive Care Unit), including guest blog from my Dad, and the CT scan image of the aneurysm.
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