Lots to Update - Pre-Op

So I'm going to write a couple of longer posts to update everyone on what's been happening over the past couple of weeks.

Pre-Op:

It was a gorgeous, sunny, perfect day as my sister and I made the drive into Victoria the afternoon before my surgery. We stopped in at Mill Bay and had lunch on the waterfront with gorgeous views. We spent the afternoon doing a bit of shopping, had dinner at Red Robin - they actually have a pretty good veggie burger - and then headed to our hotel for a swim, hot tub soak, and a lazy relax in the sauna.

I was told that I needed to take 2 chlorhexidine showers (the night before and the morning of) which is supposed to reduce the chance of infections. I was also told to drink 800ml of apple juice before bed, then another 400ml in the morning. I haven't been eating very much sugar in my diet, so I knew this wasn't going to sit well in my stomach. Sure enough... after I drank 600ml, I got a pounding headache and couldn't take anything for it. I was barely able to sleep much, and had to be up at 5am to be at the hospital for 6:45am.

Anyway, we made it to the hospital by about 6:15am and after we registered, we were sent to sit in the surgical daycare waiting room. I was told to arrive 2 hours before my surgery, which was supposed to be at 8:45am. We sat for about an hour and a half before finally I asked the nurse what was happening. I explained that I was told I had to have 2 scans before the surgery, and nobody had called me. When she checked, she said that my surgery wasn't scheduled until noon. Nobody called me to tell me that they had changed the time. So I could have saved myself the cost of a hotel room and just driven in from Nanaimo if someone had done their job.

My sister was pretty angry after we had just waited for so long, and we were both overtired. They sent me to the medical imaging area to wait for my scan. I got in there pretty quickly, and they prepped me, but the doctor didn't show up for about 1 1/2 hours to give me the dye injections into my cervix that would let them do the scan to highlight the sentinel nodes. I was lying on the hard table for all that time, as the nurses/techs repeatedly paged both surgeons trying to track one of them down.

Finally, one of the surgeons arrive and apologizes, but didn't seem too concerned. The nurses were pretty upset though... I basically held up the machine for 2 hours. They used a gamma camera to do the scan which took about 40 minutes or so. By the time I left, I said to them "I was in here so long, I thought I'd have to start paying rent." They laughed at that.

By the time I got back to surgical daycare, it was already after 11am, and my surgery time was fast-approaching. I had sent my sister away while I was waiting on the table in medical imaging. I'm glad I did. She would have been very frustrated by the time I got out of there. I told her to come back at 3pm since the surgery was only supposed to be 1 1/2 hours.

I got called into pre-op at about 11:45am. They were cutting it close. The nurses were rushing to get my prepped and ready. Three times they asked me if I could be pregnant and I told them absolutely not. Unfortunately, they said I would have to have a pregnancy test anyway. So weird. So I gave them a urine sample, which was not easy since I had been so sick from drinking the apple juice that I had been in the bathroom repeatedly all morning.

Anyway, they ask me all the necessary questions, get me hooked up to the I.V., and then said that someone still needed to come to do blood work. I found that strange, since I was sent for blood work the week before, so they should've had that information on file already. While we waited, the nurse asked me to sign the consent, but when I read it over, I had questions. The details of the surgery stated that I was having a radical hysterectomy and lymph node dissection. I had been told the cancer hadn't spread to the sentinel nodes according to the PET Scan, so there would be no reason to take them out. So she said I would have to ask the surgeon when I get upstairs.

Finally, the nurse calls the lab and they say that they already had my blood work information, so nobody would be coming. I was now ready for surgery. I waited for a porter to come get me for about 20 minutes. It was about 12:20pm by the time I was moving out of pre-op.

When I got upstairs, I waited a bit longer in an open area just outside the Operating Rooms. There were people on either side of me, also waiting for surgery. It's a little nerve-wracking. Both surgeons, the anaesthesiologist, and the nurse came over to introduce themselves and go over what would be happening. That's when I got to ask my questions about the surgery. The first surgeon said "I want to tell you that it's likely that we won't be able to do the surgery, and we'll have to stop. The size is bigger than we thought, so I want you to understand that." The lead surgeon said "we need to take the sentinel nodes to send them to the lab to have them tested during the surgery, which will determine if we can proceed."

What could I say to that? That wasn't news I wanted to hear minutes before I go into surgery. The word "likely" was too strong. Anyway, I signed the consent and was brought into the O.R. shortly afterwards. That was the strangest experience of all. Big, cold room with massive overhead lights and TV monitors. Everyone was rushing around prepping stuff. I mumbled something about not liking the surgery channel. That was the last thing I remember until I woke up in post-op.