I also had another rectocele operation to fix my prolapse and went into hospital, everything was absolutely fine, came round and I actually asked them if they’d done the operation because I had no pain I was just like when the nurse came to see me to make sure I was alright I said, “Have they done it?” and she said “Yes, why?” I said “Because I have no pain whatsoever” and I can remember her saying to me “Do you want pain?” and I said “No this is my second operation like this and the first one I was in agony, I was on my hands and knees on the floor” and I said “I was just, they gave me, I think they gave me morphine,” I said, “I was in such a pickle.” And she said “No it’s all been done, you’re absolutely fine”. So that was brilliant and that was brilliant for six months, six months was just wonderful and then it, it stopped working again and back came my rectocele so that was that, but in the meantime, I think I’d decided well I can live with that because also when I had my hysterectomy and I had my tape, life was just wonderful again.

But the consequences, you know, and obviously you’ve got to, you’ve got to, the difficult thing I had was not being able to do anything. You know you have to lie there, you have to rest, you can’t be walking around, you know you have got to allow your body to recover, and you know, and I found that really, really, really hard, actually resting and not doing nothing. And for those people what have, I mean for me, to a degree, I was able to because you know my children are that bit older, but if people are having it and they’ve got young children, you know it would be, and you know not being able to pick them up, not being, you know I couldn’t pick my grandson up.
 
You know it’s, it’s, it’s really hard, and not, you know they say about a kettle and things like that you know, no weight. Because you don’t realise how much you use this core, this core section for, you know what it is, you know just lifting up a kettle, you don’t realise. And you, and you couldn’t even do that in the first week or few weeks. And you know, you know things like that. So, I think from that perspective it’s, it’s really hard, and not being able to drive, no, that, that’s by the by. But no, it’s, it’s not being able to anything really, even the simple things what you take for granted. And it’s, I’d say it took months and months really, now, to fully recover.

And then the next thing I remember of course is waking up and somebody talking to me saying we’ve done it, we’ve done the tape we’ve also done the hysterectomy, we’ve left your ovaries and that was that. I think you sort of, they come and see you and you’re still groggy under anaesthetic and things but that was brilliant, so I came round and it was like alright okay here we go start my life, fantastic. I was discharged from hospital and then I had an awful urinary infection or infection where I had to go to the GP and go on antibiotics but that all soon sorted itself out and then that was wonderful. I felt absolutely amazing within, I mean there was the weeks of recovery and everything else but just felt amazing and suddenly my life was back on track, no awful periods, no incontinence it was great, I could dance, I could run, I could cough, I could play with the kids it was just unbelievable and to all intents and purposes an absolutely brilliant success.

I mean obviously having the initial surgery, I was absolutely over the moon because I wasn’t, I didn’t have the stress incontinence because, you know, it got to the, the point really where if we were in town together, me and my husband and he’d grab my arm and say, “Come get this, get across the road,” you know, between cars, I couldn’t, you know, I just, just couldn’t do it because I’d wee myself. So I was absolutely elated, you know, once I’ve recovered from the surgery and, and it was like, wow I was back to normal and then as time went by it was getting more uncomfortable to be intimate with my husband and it was getting more uncomfortable for me to sit down and I was thinking, I don’t understand what this is and this, this constant discomfort in the lower abdomen and I, I felt myself internally and could actually feel the, the mesh in several places and as I say, you know, I just felt, I thought ‘What on earth is going on here?’ I just didn’t understand because I’d only just heard about mesh problems at that time and then of course we couldn’t be intimate because it had, it had actually quite substantially injured my husband as well, you know, you can imagine sharp plastic is, is horrible and my mood just started to go down and down really because we, we couldn’t be intimate.

And actually for a couple of years with it, it partially worked, only partially so I would still leak but only to a manageable amount. So I went back after many, after about eight years I think, I went back to the consultant and I said was having a lot of pain in my groin. And the fact that I couldn’t stand for more than five to ten minutes without pain so walking any distance and going anywhere was always fraught with concerns for how I was going to manage should the pain start because I, once it started I needed to sit down and you can’t go and sit down when you’re on a walk or in the, especially in the rain and or in public places it, it can be very difficult to manage. So I went to the consultant and he was very sceptical. I don’t think he even believed me. I think he thought it was all in my head and I said, I feel, I thought it might have been the mesh,” and he said, “Well it can’t possibly be.”

It’s too much, it’s like you’ve got your pain aspect that you’re constantly in pain and that never goes away and you’re, you’re just taking medication all the time. The bladder uh, constantly living around your bladder problem, like going to the toilet, how long you’re on the toilet. It’s just all of it, the hernia. I don’t know it’s all of it. It’s all of it [interruption] just cannot, there’s a whole mess of medical things that your life is around, becomes medical, like instead of you having a life, it becomes a ‘medical life’, a medical problem, you are a ‘medical problem’ instead of having your own life anymore. They’ve just taken it away; it’s gone because of just the one procedure. But I can’t, I just don’t, you know, just I think the mental health, you know, its psychologically having to deal with the fact that you’re going to get worse. It’s scary, you know, as I say it’s frightening. That’s me, I’m frightened for the future, I’m frightened for if they take it out. I’m frightened if they don’t take it out so, you know, you don’t know which way to go and there isn’t any help in it, you know, they don’t, I think they’re trying to cut their lists in the mesh centres by trying to put off patients from having it removed now so they’re saying, you know, you’ll be better off learning to live with pain which is why they’re offering the psychological help in the pain management side because they want patients to learn to mentally live with it but I don’t see that as a long term solution to be honest.

The psychological issues that, that come with anything, any health and, and we all know that when you go in for surgery there’s always risks, right. But most of those risks are told to you, none of the risks were ever mentioned to us. But yet they knew what the risks were, it’s on the packaging, I mean it even says, “May cause death.” You know I mean, I don’t know in the future if this is, if they don’t get it out what harm it’s going to do to me, is it going to cause me to have sepsis, is it going to, to cause me the, the, I mean, I know and my family know and they can see it on a daily basis how I’ve gone downhill. How I can’t stand and cook a meal. How I can’t, take a pot of boiling water of potatoes off the stove and go and drain it. How I can’t get into a shower. How my husband has to help me. I mean I’m only 55 years of age, you know, so they, I mean there’s, they the Hippocratic oath you know first do no harm, don’t do any harm.

I’m on a wait list for removal. I have, however, decided to postpone my removal because the surgeons who are removing are competent and I’m very fortunate to be on the list of one of those people who are trying so hard to help, however, the government promised that there would’ve been mesh centres set up nationwide to assist us. But unfortunately, the hospitals don’t have the resources to provide suitable aftercare. So, horrific stories coming out from the ladies who’ve had it removal, but then don’t get their catheters or their packs taken out or have their three month follow up appointment, etc. And the operation is such Russian roulette, the mesh is never designed to come out, it embeds with your own tissue. It’s described as taking fish bones out of chewing gum or hair out of chewing gum, that sort of level. One of the so-called mesh centre specialists said to me, “Look, the damage is done. To be quite frank, the damage is done. All we can do by going in is maybe, maybe it halts that damage at the level that you have now. It won’t resolve the pain. But we run the risk of doing far more damage,” and that is the case, it’s Russian roulette. Some ladies come away successfully and others come away with is it called a stoma bag, for the bowel and for the bladder because of what damage that’s been done.

Looking back now, if I had you know, the information I’d needed I’d have never had my ovaries taken away. So, yeah, had the hysterectomy, ovaries went. I was never given any information about what it meant for my body or myself after hysterectomy. Had the hysterectomy, got an infection afterwards and so I ended up back in hospital with IV intravenous drip antibiotics. And then that was it, really. In all, I think it was six weeks or six months check when I saw her again and then that was when she referred me to urogynae and the ball rolled, really for me to have the TVT taken out. So, you know, yeah. Yeah, but I’m always shocked at how little information we get when, you know, something so massive as a hyst—makes you want to cry, actually. Something so massive as a hysterectomy and no information, nothing. My mum’s not had a hysterectomy and so I had nobody around me who’d had a hysterectomy to even ask and it was, to me it was just an operation. Didn't really think of the consequences of it. You know, it was going to stop the pain. That was all that was in my head. If they stopped the pain and, and got rid of the bits that you know, were causing the pain then that was all good. But no, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, I think, bar from the TVT. It’s the second worst thing I’ve ever done.

Finally, in my early thirties, at some point, 32, 33, something like that I saw a female GP who and talked about it and she was very helpful actually and then I saw her a lot after that but she said, ‘Oh you need to go and see a urologist,” and so she booked me into see a consultant and I was tested and discovered to have a a sensitive urethra I think the word, words were and that they could resolve that with a dilatation and so I said, ‘Oh yeah, fine, let’s go ahead with that.”
 
And so just booked in for a day case and had the, had the procedure under general anaesthetic and was in agony afterwards and it didn’t really solve the problem. So my, I was referred once again and saw a different consultant or group of people anyway and they re-, they said they would do the procedure again but this, but it transpired that the first procedure was done with it was a single stretch with a pair of forceps but they would use in the second time a sort of gradual dilation with cones under general anaesthetic again and actually that that that sorted it actually. That completely resolved the issue I hardly ever, I hardly ever had cystitis since and if I have it’s often been, it’s been well bacterial infection I’m pretty sure and I’m just so horrified that it took 12 or more years to resolve that.