When I went into hospital for the first operation, I needed support. I live on my own. And I thought, Oh, a general anaesthetic, what’s going to happen when I come out? How am I, you know, am I going to be move? Am I going to be tired And my friend insisted that I stayed with her for a couple or three days. Which was just what I needed, she did everything for me. I couldn’t have come home on my own.

Yes. And a lot of woman said before having surgery, often it was the very first time that they’d had surgery and they were worried about having a general anaesthetic for various reasons. Is there anything that you could say to reassure women who are worried the day before surgery, or leading up to surgery, about anaesthetic?

Well general anaesthetic where patients go to sleep to have their surgery is extremely safe. And it’s extremely safe particularly in this patient group who are having what is called elective surgery. They’ve got a problem and it’s planned that they’re having an operation for it. And therefore they’re usually assessed beforehand to know that they’re in medically good condition to have their surgery. And the number of times that a patient has problems with general anaesthetic that is severe in that kind of situation are extremely small. I think statisticians have worked out that the risk, that the drive to the hospital often may be greater than the general anaesthetic that you’re having.

So the anaesthetic sometimes can be different for patients who have come in as an emergency, after a road traffic accident or when they’re ill for other reasons, which is very different from the lady coming in to have a breast operation. So we wouldn’t see, year on year, any instant of a severe problem after a general anaesthetic for a breast patient.

Yes. Can there be smaller kind of reactions, like some of the women said they woke up shaking or shivering a bit, or vomiting.

Yes, I think that those types of things can happen. A lot of ladies often had experience in the past of having had an operation for some other reason, and the anxiety as well before the operation sometimes means they’re a bit nauseated afterwards, cos all of us as humans are complex individuals, so rather than it just being the drugs, it can be the mental state or the emotional state which affects everything. But, by and large, most patients tend to find things very straightforward and as a reflection of, like more and more these days people go home the same day.

After a wide local excision?

Yes. Yes, and occasionally in some parts after a mastectomy with drains in perhaps. But they recover very quickly. they’re usually able to meet their loved ones later on that day and they’re feeling relieved that everything’s alright.

I wasn’t happy about the fact that we spent practically sitting four hours doing nothing. I was told prior to the operation date that I’m going to be meeting somebody from the surgical team.I’m going to have a meeting with the anaesthe, no I can’t say that [laughs].

Anaesthetist?

Yes, thank you, anaesthetist. That happened in about three minutes flat, the two of them. The rest of the time it was sitting around and getting more and more worked up about the fact that this is all badly managed. And finally to find that my operation won’t be until twelve oclock midday.

I felt that they just put me in a situation where I’ll get more and more wound upabout the whole thing. Instead of giving me enough information of why this was happening this way, I felt that I’m just being put on a conveyor belt. Because they work there, they know everything, how it’s going to happen. For them it’s just another routine day. But for me it’s, to some extent a life changing date because I’m going to lose something. it’s not that I don’t want to lose that lump because I do, thank you very much. But I felt to some extent like I’m sitting in a old people’s home, when every chair looks different and equally uncomfortable. You’re just treated as a thing or a number rather than a person.

I also had,a wire guided procedure. I had to have another mammogram just before the operation, they insert a tiny,very fine wire into where the trouble is. So that the surgeon would know how far to go and how much to cut around it. That thing was fabulous.It was a team of three ladies and a male doctor. They were just so focussed about you in the middle and they’re doing things to you. They explained everything. They done utmost to make comfortable as much as possible.it’s like a different planet altogether. it’s really in the same hospital. So what they can do on the ground floor level, up on the first floor, is way, way different.

What else comes to mind? I had a headache at the time already going on. It was a kind of, just a tension headache.

While you were waiting?

While we were waiting in hospital in the morning. I asked for a pill and even that couldn’t be given, just two paracetamols, without somebody signing for it. So I thought next time I will take my own stuff before I go in, if there’s going to be a next time. By the time I actually had my wire inserted and was all taped up and ready to go, things started to move very quickly. And within about ten minutes from coming back from this wire thing insertion place, I was put onone of these trolley things. And pushed into a sort of pre-op place where, again, I started to feel like I’m just really like a lump of lard here. Different people came in from all sorts of directions. They didn’t really explain what’s going to happen. The person who inserted the needle had trouble finding the vein. So she poked about which wasn’t very nice, just when you’re alreadyshaking with nerves.

I was given a date for the surgery in November. Perhaps the night before the surgery was very worrying, like having any surgery is. But they were just absolutely brilliant. I went to the clinic because our clinic in [place name] is not in the same hospital as where you have the operation. We have a separate breast cancer clinic. I went to the clinic first and had several mammograms done to make, find out where the actual DCIS was because it doesn’t show up. And they needed to put this fine wire in to show the doctor when he came to do the operation exactly where the DCIS was that needed removing.

Yeah. And you, on the day of the operation, how did you feel on the actual day, can you remember exactly what happened on that day?

I felt really good on the day of the operation. I don’t know why but I had the wire put in at the local clinic in [place name]. And then I went by private ambulance to the hospital. And I just sat around at hospital reading magazines and talking to another lady whod had a similar operation. And everything went really, really quickly.

It was actually quite horrendous because I was told that I would have to have a wire inserted into the breast, that in order to do that I had to go to [hospital name], which is a forty-five minute drive away. Have the wire inserted at half past eight in the morning. And then get back to [another hospital] to have the operation. And I asked, Well who takes me, do I have an ambulance or No you get there yourself So my friend drove me. I had the wire inserted and they drove me back to [the second hospital]. Got back to [the second hospital] about half past ten. And sat in a waiting room until half past two, with a wire inserted in my breast. And not feeling at all well. So that is a very negative side. It may only be in this area, this part of the country that happens. But to expect someone to travel to [hospital name], have a wire inserted. Another forty-five minute trip back to the hospital and then wait four hours in a waiting room with a wire in your breast, not good.

So I was pretty annoyed and very uncomfortable. don’t get me wrong, the wire didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel it. But very aware that it was there. And ooh could I pull it out? Or, you know, I just had a little sort of cardigan on, could I rip it out? And ooh that was horrible.

Yeah. So you just sat and waited in the waiting room, was your friend with you?

She was with me the whole time. And of course I hadn’t been allowed to drink or eat since the previous evening. So she didn’t feel that she could go and get herself a drink because I was gasping by then. The anaesthetist came and said he needed to talk to me. He took me to a side room, which was a storeroom. And he had a consultation with me. Then the surgeon came and took me back to that same room. And then I was back in the waiting room. And that was just the longest four hours of my life. I just wanted it over and done with.

When I came round after the operation, the first memory I have is having the shakes really, really bad, trembling, kind of uncontrollable trembling. Nobody said this is a sort of an after effect of being put to sleep. I thought,why can’t they be bothered to say before you go to theatre, By the way, when you come round you’re going to have shaking limbs and shaking everything. And you’re going feel very, very cold and this is perfectly normal. This is a side effect or an after effect of the stuff we put in you.

So that was about one oclock. All this shaking that I’m now having is just the nerves of talking about it. It lasted for about forty minutes at the time I think. I still had the headache.I was given more painkillers that didn’t work. So basically until five oclock, I was having this headache and really weird sensation of coming round from the operation. Sometime in the afternoon my husband appeared and then he’s gone home to look after the children.

Once I’d come round after the surgery I was extremely dizzy and disorientated. And I could see other people that had had surgery that day and they were sitting up in bed and drinking tea and eating toast. And I just felt awful. And I’d actually got an oxygen mask on and I was not with it at all. And nurses kept coming and checking on me and taking my temperature and doing this, that and the other. And I could see, people keep coming around with tea trolleys and I just couldn’t physically do that. And once I had sat up, I tried to walk to the loo and I was all over the place. And when I came back, that’s when I started to be really physically sick. I was very bilious and they gave me some tablets to control it. I’d mentioned beforehand that I’d had a general anaesthetic twenty years previously for some dentistry and I’d had a bad reaction to that. And they said, That’s OK, we’ll give you a lot of anti sickness stuff in with the anaesthetic So I thought I was going to be OK, but I wasn’t. I had the same violent reaction to it.

They gave me tablets to control the sickness, they didn’t work. They gave me a little pill that you put under your tongue to control it, that didn’t work. And in the end, this one particular nurse, bless her, made it her mission of the day to stop me being sick. And she actually gave me intravenous drugs. And I told them that I wanted to go home because I’d had such a poor night the night before and there was an old lady that was moaning all night. She was in the wrong ward. And it wasn’t her fault, and I felt sorry for her but I just couldn’t rest. And I said, I’d like to go home as soon as possibl, because originally this WLE had been planned for day surgery. So I’d got it into my head that I would be home the same night. And then they changed it and put me on an admission ward instead. And I really didn’t want to stay. I’d had to stay in the one night, obviously because I didn’t have the operation until actually four oclock in the afternoon, and I wasn’t fit to go home that night. I wasn’t with it, I was still under the influence of the anaesthetic and had a really bad night, as I say.

And the following day I was still being ill [laughs] and they gave me these intravenous drugs and they said, If you canrdquo;, this was later on in the afternoon that day, I kept saying, I want to go home, I can’t spend another night in here and not sleep at all again I was physically exhausted. Obviously I’d had nothing to eat or drink then since goodness knows when, so I was beginning to feel quite weak.

And they said, If you can take a drink and keep some food down, we’ll consider it So I was sipping away at this water and I ate two Nice biscuits, which a nurse went and fetched me. I was just hoping and praying that, you know, I could keep those down. And then in the end they still didn’t want me to go home. They still wanted me to stay another night for observation because of the bad reaction. But I was having none of it and I just, I rang my partner up and said, "Come and fetch me."

The surgeon had been round and he’d said he’d got no problem with me going home. As far as the operation was concerned everything was fine. He’d checked my wound and everything. But the nurses were concerned about the reaction to the anaesthetic. And apparently my oxygen levels had dropped low or something. This is why I’d got the mask on. But anyway, I did come home.

So you came home and were you OK at home or you were still sick?

No, no, I’d stopped being sick. The intravenous drugs did the trick. And I wasn’t sick again after. Even the car journey home, I was pretty doubtful about that but [laugh