Surgery is done, and I’ve been back at home for 2 weeks! I’m not really sure where to start, but I do know that this might be a long one. Sorry in advance – but I need to write it all down, for me. So that I remember the whole thing.

I was dropped at Llandough Hospital exactly 3 weeks ago by Rich and Nate. I cried, a lot. And then said my good byes, knowing that because of Covid I wouldn’t see another person I knew until I was picked up again. I was admitted to the Cardiothoracic ward on Tuesday evening, before my operation was to take place on the Wednesday morning. My first night on the ward was an odd one. I was on a 6 bed ward, with the majority of the other ladies having undergone major heart surgery. Honestly, this was terrifying, as even though they were all recovering extremely well, their operations sounded complex, and they all had these quite scary looking incisions right down the centres of their chests.

That evening was spent chatting things through with my new ward neighbours, undergoing a variety of tests and pre-operative procedures, and meeting my Anaesthetist. This was a big deal for me, as I was really scared at the prospect of “going under”. Dr A answered all my questions, seemed incredibly experienced, and talked me through the idea of potentially operating on both lungs during the same operation, as opposed to doing the left lung first, and then the right lung 6 weeks or so after – as originally planned. There were many pros of doing both together; one general anaesthetic, one hospital stay, one recovery, all nodules out at the same time. However, Dr A was very careful to explain that they wouldn’t be able to know if they could do both until I was actually having the operation. He went through the procedure, and told me that they would have to re-inflate the left lung that had just been operated on, and see if it held up before deflating the right lung. They would be relying on my one lung that had just had bits cut out of it to ventilate my body, whilst they operated on the other, which sounded way too complicated to me and surely not possible.  

The next morning I was second to go down for surgery, which meant I had to wait! It was pretty agonising, and even though the lovely ladies on the ward did their best at keeping my spirits high and my nerves at bay, I was well and truly petrified. Eventually they came to transport me down to theatre, and that’s when the tears really started to flow. I couldn’t get them to stop! A lovely lady who was part of Dr A’s aneasthetic team met me at the doors to the operating theatre. She was incredibly reassuring and told me that I would see a lot of people and a lot of machinery when I got inside the room, but I was to remember that everyone was there for me! For no other reason, than to focus their expertise and knowledge on me and my operation. (P.S. I totally thought they would knock me out before wheeling me in to theatre – one of many assumptions I got wrong.)

My sister-in-law’s brother happened to be one of the surgical nurses for my operation, and it was just the best thing seeing his friendly face there in that big room filled with scary looking hospital equipment. Everybody was dressed in full hazmat suits (bloody Covid) and Dr A got straight to work at cannulating my right hand and placing an arterial line in my left wrist. I calmed down at this point, as I got talking with the team about the view from their floor to ceiling window that was directly in front of me. You could see the whole of Cardiff Bay, including Wales Millennium Centre, and I carried on talking about my work at WNO until I fell asleep.

Now, this is where I got things wrong (again), and wish I’d have known a bit more about what to expect prior to surgery. I was so scared of waking up too early, or waking up in huge amounts of pain. In reality, I was pretty much out of it for the following 3-4 days. I remember parts of conversations, but really I was so drugged up I felt very little pain, and had very little awareness of what exactly was going on around me. The operation took around 5 hours, and most importantly they managed to operate on both lungs. In fact, they told me that I was the first person in Wales to have a bilateral lung operation this year.

I sort of remember opening my eyes for a split second in recovery, and then I was taken straight back to the ward. I had 2 chest drains, which sound scarier than they were. They are placed after lung surgery to remove excess air and fluid from your lungs whilst they heal. They’re stitched in place so that they don’t move, and you get a much tinier tube placed at the back of each shoulder blade dripping a constant stream of local anaesthetic in to your chest cavity. God send! I also had an oxygen mask, wires that hooked me up to constant heart rate/blood pressure/o2 stat monitors, and a drip attached to a button where I could self administer fentanyl (opioid pain killer) every 5 minutes if I wanted to.

I slept for about 90% of the days following, interspersed with some updates from the surgical team. Tom, one of the surgeons who had assisted my consultant (all hail Miss K) with the operation came to see me a few days after and told me that the operation had been a success. They had only needed to make one incision on each side – around 10cm in length – as opposed to 3 or 4. He said that I had really good underlying lung health and it had made the operation a lot more straight forward from their perspective. It was so nice to hear something positive about my health for a change! They do the operation through keyhole surgery and once the lung is deflated, the team are able to see clearly on the big screen bits of the lung that don’t look as they should. Miss K, Tom and the rest of the surgical team took the following: 1 wedge resection top left (first nodule), 3 resections bottom left (second nodule), 1 resection top right (third nodule) 1 resection middle right, and 1 resection bottom right (both of these were areas of suspicion and made sense to go for it whilst they were already there). They also took lymph nodes from the chest wall, which apparently is standard procedure when doing lung surgery. They still only took around 10% of overall lung tissue as originally planned, and are hopeful that they got clear margins around the nodules. All of these samples now get sent off to be tested in the labs, and I will hear back in the next couple of weeks exactly what they found.

Ward life was interesting. I had physios, a pain management team, a dedicated nurse each shift and the team of doctors and surgeons who were constantly around. I also had Dr F, my total Rockstar of an Oncologist. He was on the end of the phone day and night, and in contact with my family back at home. As I wasn’t allowed to have any visitors, and was really out of it to begin with, I can’t explain how valuable it was having someone I knew on the inside. Even though we were in different hospitals, he had access to my real time records and was in contact with the surgical team looking after me. He even turned up at Llandough Hospital to speak with the Registrar at one point. I can’t write about Dr F without becoming emotional (could be the drugs, but I also don’t know how I got so lucky.)

The biggest relief were the chest drains coming out. It is the weirdest of sensations, but I can assure anyone reading this about to have lung surgery (or a boob job) that it honestly didn’t hurt. As I’ve mentioned further up, I was never in agonising amounts of pain, however the drains were really uncomfortable. It made it near on impossible to sleep, and as soon as they came out, I stopped taking the strongest pain killers prescribed as I didn’t need them. I think another reason your pain is managed so efficiently after a lung operation, is that in order to get your lungs working again you need to be able to take deep breaths and cough from the moment you wake up from the general anaesthetic. This also prevents chest infections and pneumonia developing, so it is crucial you don’t feel pain in order to do the physio excercises and recover properly. I was to stay in hospital for 24 hours after the last drain was removed, so that the doctors could do chest x rays, check incisions, and get medications ready before I was officially discharged.

Seeing Rich waiting at the door to the hospital for me will go down as one of my favourite moments ever! I had missed him so much, we’re just the greatest team, and I had felt lost without him by my side for the past week. Coming back to our house brought out all the emotions, and then Nate came home from school. Another unforgettable moment! He was so careful with me, cuddling gently and asking all about the baddies in my chest. Explaining things to him in an honest way, considerate of his age, is a whole topic for another post. But I’m so proud of him! He understands a lot. I think it helps that he has always seen me looking well, and like myself. I’m very grateful that on the outside I look no different than I did a couple of years ago. For his sake, more than anyone else’s.

So, Rich and I are self isolating for 14 days (Nate is still allowed to go to school) and then things get back to normal. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, I feel better and better everyday in the lead up to my favourite time of the year – Christmas!! Stay tuned for pathology results and next steps…