Portacath Removal Surgery (third and final attempt)

As I ended the last post with “I can’t remember anything else after being told the surgery failed”, I will skip the week between stuff, and go straight to the third attempt. Rest assured the week in-between surgery two and three was just a lot of pain, not sleeping, not eating, and not breathing.

So, the day before I was due in, a third different surgeon called me to explain that he imagines that I’m very nervous and he wanted to give a little reassurance just so I knew what to expect. This guy was really kind, very patient with my questions, so we were on the phone for a good while. He explained that they’re going to bring in a cardiac consultant because of the risks involved with working with the artery so close to the heart, as well as a consultant who specialises in the equipment they were having to use to get this bloody thing out of me. We were told to arrive at the hospital for around midday this time, I guess because I was a bit of a last-minute fit in type of job.

So once again, we pulled up to the John Radcliffe, feeling incredibly sick and demoralised. Dad had to park the car in the town because past 09:00 there is very little parking at the hospital, so I was dropped off and made my way in. Bumped into two of the physios in the corridor and unashamedly, emotionally vomited on them in front of like 50 people; all VERY dignified.

Made my way down to the dreaded interventional radiology, was met with a very grumpy receptionist, took my seat in the waiting room, and in a futile attempt to take my mind off of the situation, I was looking around the room, trying to guess what everyone else was in for. I was sat in there by myself for maybe forty minutes before dad arrived, and in this time an anaesthetist (I’ve written this word what feels like hundreds of times now and I still have to google the spelling) came out. I really liked this guy, he seemed to actually appreciate what an awful time I was having, he matched my level of solemness and spoke very gently. I was kind of curled up in a ball on the chair and had my foot resting on my knee, he looked down and I could see the cogs going in his head, he then took my arms and scanned my veins (which cannot be described as anything but “pathetic”), then looked back towards my foot and hesitantly asked if he could put a cannula in my ankle. I couldn’t really get my words out because whenever I’ve seen people with cannulas in their feet, I think to myself “wow they must be on the brink of dying to need one in there”, so the dread of panic went shooting through me and I managed to mutter out “why”. He explained that due to the kind of surgery they’re planning to do on this artery, there is a risk of losing a lot of blood and if that happens, he’s going to need to get blood into me quickly. I said he can, but only if he puts me to sleep first, which he agreed to. He told me I was going to be okay, patted my shoulder and left.

Eventually dad arrived, and as soon as he asked what the plan was, I started to cry because you know big stress. Interventional radiology is on level one which at the JR, is one level below ground floor, so the WIFI just wouldn’t connect, and I hadn’t brought anything other than my phone as a distraction, so the worries of the surgery were filling my head like a tap. I mentioned to dad that I saw a Taylor Swift magazine in the WHSmith upstairs, so he went along and got that for me which ended up costing £10 (!!!), it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about her, but the pictures were pretty.

A couple of hours later, one of my consultants and one of the physios came down. I like them both very much and I hadn’t seen the consultant since two of her maternity leaves so that was a lovely surprise. Although I feel very safe and comfortable with them both, it was still rather daunting them both coming down, it almost felt like a “farewell”. I’m a pro at looking for signs or messages in things so this was a pretty big blow but it was good to see them both and talk to people I actually trusted. The physio did some work on me where again, he knew the best way to distract me was through asking all sorts of questions about Taylor Swift and basically letting me defend her being considered a slut by society.

He went on his way, and after that, breathing felt a lot easier which made me feel little more at ease. A nurse came along and asked me to get changed into a gown and grippy socks, which I did, then they left me in the waiting room for like two more hours. At this point, it was so late in the day that it was just myself and dad in this waiting room with one elderly man waiting to be picked up. I’m sat there in my gown, braless feeling extremely exposed and a bit foolish to be quite honest.

I think maybe around 17:00, the surgeon I’d spoken on the phone with came in, wearing his radiology apron, which was splattered in blood, so this guy was clearly in a bit of a rush. He says they’re still planning on doing my surgery but there’s a chance they won’t find enough staff members to be involved so they might have to send us home. Now I’d spent the last the five hours psyching myself up to get this done so when he said there was a possibility it won’t happen today, my energy depleted, the notion of yet again going home to more pain and discomfort.

Not long after this, he came back out and wanted to discuss the risks associated with this surgery. He again, explained they had to bring in the cardiac specialist because if, during the procedure, they damage the vessel, there is a possibility they’d have to put a stent in (this is a wire mesh tube that acts like a scaffold to help keep the artery open), he elaborated that this would be a pretty major surgery so I had to mentally prepare myself to wake up in ICU after basically what would've been open heart surgery. The blows just kept coming and wouldn’t stop. Both dad and I were pretty upset after having these conversations and the level of stress was just off the charts.

I didn’t want to do any of it anymore, I was too scared and wanted to go home. But the thing is, this wasn’t really an option; you can’t throw in the towel when it comes your body, it was either be braver than I’d ever had to be before and go through with the surgery or go home, keep the tube hanging out of my neck and let my lungs deteriorate. I was hoping this was all a terrible dream and I’d wake up, portacath removed, lungs clear.

The surgeon and nurses came in and said they were ready at 18:00, I’d been crying for a fair while at this point so had a very emotional hug with dad and followed the nurse down the hallway to operating room. It honestly felt like I was being led to the gallows, my legs just stopped walking halfway down because I was so frightened of going through with it, I truly thought I was going to turn around and just walk out.

(Can I just say, this is bringing back terrible flashbacks, I’m having to take two-minute pauses in between each step of the story)

The nurse encouraged me to keep walking so I got into the prep room, climbed up on the trolley and tears still streaming down my face (if you hadn’t already guessed from these recent blogs, I cry A LOT). The same anaesthetist greeted me, and I felt a little more at ease with him. I swear on my life he put like a two-inch cannula in my forearm, which is obviously not what I wanted but if I was at risk of bleeding to death, I couldn’t really argue their methods of trying to save my life. He assured me that he wouldn’t have to go into my ankle now this one was in my arm. I liked this guy because I said, “ow that hurt” and he replied with “would you like me to do it again” and that brought about, what could be considered the closest thing to a smile from me in that entire ten days. And then the mask goes on, the milky stuff goes in your vein and you’re falling asleep trying not to think about how terrible the next few hours could be for your body.

I woke up in recovery, and I knew instantly that I was hurting but it was only a few minutes in that I realised it wasn’t my neck (it was a bit) but the main source of pain was in my wrist where they’d put an arterial catheter, which is tube that goes from the wrist up the forearm to measure blood pressure in high risk or complex procedures. This really bloody hurt, and the bruising I got after it was something.

Obviously, I was struggling to work out what had happened, what hadn’t happened, where I was and basically not really knowing what’s going on, but I recognised the anaesthetist standing nearby and reached out to him and cried and apologised for being such a wuss and for crying so much. I know he said something of significance, but I can’t actually remember what it was. I wish I knew his name because I felt safe with him which obviously, I didn’t really have much of in this time.

Once they knew I wasn’t about to crash, they wheeled me up to one of the wards and the surgeon came and caught up and told me the surgery went really. He was beaming, this guy was over the moon, so again, blubbering I thanked him and apologised for being such a mess. He said he didn’t have dads number so they couldn’t contact him, so my poor father was floating around the hospital at like 21:00 with no way of finding out any information about me. BUT we were lucky that I was just coherent enough to be able to type out our home number on like a hand drawn keypad, where mum could pick up and then relay the message to dad or pass a phone number on.

Obviously, I was in pain because that’s what surgery is, but I was finally comfortable, I didn’t have this damn catheter sticking out of my neck so yes, I was feeling far better. I stayed over the night because I’d got out of surgery so late; it was probably the least stressful sleep I’d ever had in hospital just from pure relief. Two of the physios popped in the next day, and I was overjoyed to see them so they exclaimed “oh look she’s smiling again yay” which was a really lovely thing to hear, I felt good seeing them, it felt good that they could see I was better, it was a very wholesome moment. I mean my entire being was still just completely battered, my body, my lungs, my mind, and my soul but this was where the light started creeping in.

And that was the end of my portacath removal ordeal, it was awful, terrible, unbearable, hated every minute but it was finally over, with no heart surgery, with no stent, so I suppose on some level you could call it a success? It’s been eight weeks since the last surgery but I’m still struggling with flashbacks to the whole thing, these definitely got worse during the five-week admission post surgeries, and I think that was triggered by coughing blood a few times whilst in. I’ve got plans to go back to therapy to deal with these flashbacks because as you might expect, they’re pretty distressing and not really something I want to have to deal with on top of everything else in my life, both physically and mentally.

I’ll write another post on how I *hoped* the first surgery would’ve gone because I think that’s equally important to talk about. Again, thank you so much for reading through these, as I said in my last post, you really make me feel heard and it makes me feel like my reaction to all of these surgeries and the complications in-between isn’t unwarranted.