Preparing For Surgery

My surgery were scheduled to take place on October 26 and I went into hospital on Sunday the 24. I had a light lunch at home before going to the hospital but that was my last food for several days.

Possibly the most unpleasnt part of the whole thing was the effects of the nuclear-strength laxatives they gave me to "clean out" my system so they could use a short section of my bowel to construct my urinary diversion. The first dose ofPicolax was on the Sunday aternoon and that was bad enough but the second dose on the Monday was just plain horrible. I sat on the toilet for about half an hour with water pouring out of me and leaving me dizzy, sweating like a pig and shiverig all at the same time. It was a thoroughly nasty experience.

I was encouraged to drink plenty of fluids throughout Monday until the early hours of Tuesday mourning. In fact it had been suggested by the anaesthetist at I should receive hydration via a drip during Monday night but instead of that I agreed that the night nurse would wake me up every hour and I would drink a glass of water.

He and I had also discussed what sort of pain rrelief I should use. He said he had very good results from epidurals in recent years. It appears that they are very effective in about 80% of cases and he prefers them because there are fewer complications post surgery than there are with the more traditional morphine base pays relief systems. He advised me to choose an epidral but said that a patient-controlled morphine system would immediately be available to me if the epidural proved ineffective in my case. I decided to accept his advice.

I pointed out to him that I am a terrible coward an that I regretted the fact that they don't give you a "pre-op" these days so that by the time you go upstairs you are as high as a kite. He promised that he would give me a shot of something that would take all my worries away and in the event he was as good as his word.

So at about 8 o'clock on Tuesday I was ready and they whelled my off to the operating suite.