The Operation Part II

"He drew around the wrong part of my leg."

Not what you want to realise when you come round from anaesthesia. Immediately followed by the horrific logic of "all this has been for nothing then".

Waiting for Dr S to come and do his rounds was awful. I was so angry I could have cried. Instead, I dozed. 

Finally, Dr S appeared and assured me the operation went well, blah blah blah. "Did it?" I asked. "Because I have realised that you drew around the wrong part of my leg. With smaller margins than you needed. And I didn't notice because I was so focused on the skin graft/local anaesthetic thing". He chose to totally ignore the angry undertones and brightly said "oh yes, Mr Khan spotted that and corrected it, don't worry". As though he had poured apple juice instead of orange. I never want to see that guy again. 

The following day was standard in hospital, with the only issue being my donor site not stopping bleeding. At 9am I asked for the dressing to be changed as it was soaked with blood, and by 2pm it still wasn't. I totally get how busy the ward nurses are and my blame lies firmly with Jeremy Hunt and the government for not providing enough money to the NHS for training and enough boots on the ground. Saturday evening I was discharged (with no dressings, which was a major problem as it would turn out) and home I went.

The following few days was spent in bed trying mostly to get comfortable. The back of my right leg was obviously cut wide open and skin grafted, although it wasn't as painful as it would sound because the nerves had been cut. The biggest pain by a long way, both literally and figuratively, was the donor site which was on the side of my left thigh. It WOULD NOT stop bleeding for days. We had been told under no circumstances to change the dressing so, like obedient school children, we didn't. Even when the blood soaked through to the other side and then my bedsheet. We called the district nurse instead and she came out and tried her best but didn't have a bandage big enough. Instead, she taped some padding to the gauze and put some smaller plasters over that, and then the pain began. Severe, scream-out-loud pain in the middle of the night. The next morning, Alex found the number for the dressings clinic at the hospital and called them. They were pretty disbelieving that we hadn't been giving any dressings nor their number but hey. We hadn't. They took the blood-soaked dressing off, which was rock-solid by that point, and redid it for me. They also decided to unstaple and re-dress the graft site and I was terrified they'd find the graft hadn't taken or some such nonsense but...it was fine. Alex took a photo and I didn't fully comprehend the size of the hole in my leg at that point. 10cm wide by 3cm deep. 

Photos to follow in the next post so skip it if you are squeamish.