Operation Baby Yeah!

Went into hospital on Thursday 21st march to claim a bed for my op the following day. I'd spent the week eating whatever I wanted and had a few beers. We were told straight away that there was no bed available that night. I could stay in the travel lodge over the road, or go home and have a final meal there. Chinese on the way home? Why not. Nill by mouth didn't kick in till 2am so I had plenty of timeto eat any final treats. Chinese, beer and a couple of chocs did the trick.
Slept well. Up at 5am to get to the MRI for 7. Easy. Traffic was quiet.
Booked in, had a little delay with the spelling of my name, chritopher!, then we were good to go.
Joh walked down to theatre with me and kissed me goodbye and good luck at the door. Tears were shed, hugs and kising all round.

The anesthetiser went to work, tubing me up and prepping me for the various drugs and chemicals about to go in and come out.
Lay down on the bed, start counting down from 20. 19,18,17,16


Woke up in ICU. Joh was beside me holding my hand. She told me they'd taken all my stomach out, a third of my oesophagus, removed my lower right rib and made a stomach out of the join between oesophagus and upper bowl.
I felt a bit rough.
Eventually I was moved to the HDU where I've been till today.
This is a specialist unit where patients need high dependency care. 1 nurse to 2 patients in my case. I'd had an epidural fitted for my pain relief, with button access to increase the dose if I needed to. That came in handy. Joh and the kids came to see me on the Saturday but I was well out of it. Spaced!
After a few days of the epidural, it was time to move on to others as that's not supposed to be in too long.
Removing any of the many tubes coming out of me the last few days hasn't been any problem. Removing the drug associated with that feed was though.
When that came out, I was in agony. The epidural had been hiding a very painful and irritated left lung that was now restricting my breathing. Damn that really hurt bad. I spent the next few days in agony. In the search for replacement meds, a drug was finally found that nearly did the trick.
Unfortunately I was on a very strong dose and couldn't stay on that for too long. The key was to remove all my lung drains and reduce my physical pain.
This was finally completed on Friday, my final, of three drains, came out, and the central line into my jugular was also removed.
All I've got left is a catheter, a feeding line directly into my stomach and a canular on my hand. Easy.
I'm not on any solids, as I'm only allowed liquids through my mouth atm.
I'm not on any antibiotics as I've no infections to fight.
I'm healing well.
I'll be out on the bike as soon as I safely can.
A big thanks to everyone who's visited, and anyone else who wants to come along, get in touch with joh or myself to coordinate.
I should be going down to a ward today.
Hope to see you all soon