‘These scars remind me’

Post holiday I’m just getting back into the swing of things with work, the same daily routine. Wake up, sign onto the laptop, breakfast, take the dog out, work, sign off the laptop, chill. The days are merging into one as the big operation day draws closer.

I start to notice my facial hair is slowly coming back, albeit as soft and fluffy as a chinchilla! This makes a big difference to me as I always worry along with the hair on my head that my hair wouldn’t grow back, so this is a small win.

13 July 2021; this is pre-op day where I go to Addenbrookes hospital for all my check-ups and tests. This includes, swabs for MRSA, blood tests, ECG and scans. Questions answered with the nurse to confirm I’m the right person and I’m mentally and physically healthy another to have the upcoming operation.

It’s all go physically as I push myself to get back up and ready following the surgery in January and the chemotherapy. I get announced as the Peterborough United ladies reserves assistant manager and I go for a run with the aim to run 3 days in a row despite the incredible heat we were experiencing. I also set myself a personal target of getting out of hospital in 3 days, after seeing that I could be in hospital for 10 days or more and seeing a lad go through the same as me get released after 4 days.

I maintain my exercise with the help and support of Ellen and I manage my three runs in a row, sandwiched around 2 long walks with Arya as I knew I wouldn’t be able to take her out for a while, so I had to make the most of the time together as I’ll miss it. At this point I think the exercise is there to distract me from my surgery, I’m starting to get really scared and nervous.

21 July 2021; surgery day and as per previous surgery/chemo days I could not sleep the night before due to the worry and so I’m up and ready to go for 5am! We have to be at the hospital for 7.30am so we won’t be leaving until around 6.30am. In the car it’s probably the most nervous I’ve felt ever, and I feel for Ellen as she’s holding my clammy hand! Ellen’s talking to me and trying to comfort me but at that moment in time the words might as well be a foreign language as everything’s just hitting me like a trampoline and bouncing back out, I’m struggling to retain anything.

I kiss el goodbye and head into the main reception area and there is a huge queue of people for the section that I’m heading into, I shuffle to the end and we wait for 20/25 minutes to go through. It’s almost like an airport security system just without the anticipation of something exciting on the other side.

Once I make it through I’m fortunate in that I don’t have to wait around long, a nurse soon takes me to a cubicle where I change into the gown, pants and socks provided by the hospital. I sit and I wait for someone to come see me and just like busses, as soon as one person has been, it’s almost like 3/4 different doctors/nurses come through and see me.

I have my first face to face chat with the surgeon and he makes me feel reassured right away, although I do have huge butterflies as I head into the unknown of a massive surgery. After about 45 minutes to an hour of waiting around they take me through to the theatre, there are so many people in there, it is quite overwhelming, so many eyes staring and so many people looking so busy. You really do think surely they can’t all be for my surgery. I jump up on the bed and they start getting me sorted ready to give me the general anaesthesia. I have wires hooked up in my arm and then they start prodding around my spine, this is where everything just goes blank and I lose a couple hours of my life as the next thing I know is that I’m waking up in the post surgery recovery bays with a nurse standing over me ‘Hi Mr Bratcher, how are you feeling?’.

I feel like I’ve had a good sleep but also couldn’t feel anything, it’s a weird feeling, I feel comfortably numb in that I had no emotion or physical pain at that point, I just knew I dare not move any part of my body! The nurse passes me a phone as they’ve received a call from Ellen, and she was just checking in on me which I really appreciated, but I was a bit thrown as I wasn’t expecting a call to come through on the ward phone!

It wasn’t long before a room became available to me and I was taken too it. It was at the end of a corridor away from the main ward so for the most part I had plenty of privacy, the main negative was that my room was so bloody hot and I was not allowed to eat anything until the following evening, I was only allowed to have water which wasn’t great because I was so hungry!

This is where the mental side of it came into play for me, it was so hot and uncomfortable I just could not sleep. Everything around you smells funny, everything is beeping, I’ve got wires all over, coming from my nose and arms. You just feel like you can’t move and I just can’t even sleep. Then there’s the times you feel like you may drift off and then a nurse comes in and wakes you up. To top it off I had issues with my self pumping mattress as it kept inflating and deflating itself, so one point I’d be laying on a firm mattress which made me feel like my stitches were bursting out and then within the same breath I’d be feeling myself sink into the bed and resting on the metal bars underneath. I dealt with this all through the night as the nurse couldn’t get anyone to sort it, so no sleep, annoying bed causing me pain here and there and all the other stuff going on, including a saturated body due to the heat. Add the constant medication and only drinking water, I literally felt like time was going to stop and I’d just be in that hell forever.

Thursday 22nd July 2021; a long long long day! Hot, bothered, worried about getting out, wanting to see Ellen and just generally wanting to be in my happy place.

Breakfast starts with just a lovely glass of water, still no solids or fats so milk was out of the question. I just did whatever I was told and so I stuck to water. You can’t use the tv unless you pay money so my days are prolonged by boredom and laying there with just my own thoughts to entertain me. I had managed to scoot up and down the bed tiny bits but I was terrified of doing any damage to my stomach or the catheter.

One of the nurses comes round early afternoon to sort my next lot of medication and check I’m doing okay, then the nurse from the night shift pops in and advises my bed will be changed within the hour. I ask the nurse if I can get up and move around. They have to check I’ve passed enough urine through the catheter and do some other checks before they agree to let me get up and out of bed. They take the catheter out which is the weirdest experience ever, hard to describe what the feeling of something plastic being pulled out of your penis feels like, I can tell you, it is not pleasant at all!

Once they’ve removed that, the nurse helps me up and helps me slowly walk around, one baby step at a time. I am absolutely buzzing because I’m barely past 24 hours since my surgery, so despite some pain here and there I keep moving about, it felt so good to feel somewhat free again after what felt like an eternity confined to the bed. I shuffle to the loo whilst the nurse pops out, and pee for the first time. As with my last surgery for some reason I’m dreading seeing blood in my urine, although there should never be any blood. I pass urine fine and I breathe a huge sigh of relief, that’s another tick on my targets list. Going for a number two (as I’m scared I’ll burst stitches or it doesn’t happen at all), eating and getting out of the hospital are my remaining targets. Whilst I’m up the bed does get changed completely, however they only just tell me once I lay down that I’ll be moving onto the actual ward as there is a lady who will require the privacy of the room.

I get moved onto the ward at dinner time, so I’m able to enjoy a few smile bite of potato and chicken with a cup of tea in my little section on the ward. The whole atmosphere is different, with 5 other people in the room with me, all in different states. One bloke is not happy with his treatment and is clearly having issues with his mental health as he has mentioned on numerous occasions that on release he will be going out and hurting people. Im sure the nurses and doctors he speaks to highlight this as a red flag but I’m also worried for my life and let Ellen know what I’m dealing with. Even hotter on the ward and more noises plus loads going on with other patients around me means I will be going through another long night with no sleep!

Friday 23rd July 2021; The old man next to me has dementia and cries out in his sleep regularly for his mum, and wakes up screaming for his mum confused by his surroundings. He has a fall and pulls out his catheter which meant we had emergency staff in with us for 2/3 hours in the morning. They were quick to act and before you know it there’s 5 or 6 staff members helping the gentleman out.

After another agonisingly long night, breakfast comes round and I can have some weatabix with a tea again. Still absolutely starving as I’m only taking little bits here and there. All I’m waiting for now is to get the all clear from the hospital to go home. I speak to one of the doctors in the morning and I answer all the questions in the hope he will send me home, it sounds promising but that would be the last contact I have with a doctor/nurse about going home for maybe 5 hours.

Every-time someone comes by I ask what’s happening and they tell me ‘oh we are just checking for you’ and then they don’t come back, seems to be a different nurse/doctor each time they come back.

I skip dinner as I thought I’d be going earlier, so I’m extra hungry but I get the good news I’m waiting for, a doctor is happy to sign me off with all the medication needed for my release. I sit down and have a chat with a nurse who goes through my Dos and don’t; with the main one being eat a healthy no fat diet for 2 weeks to avoid having a drain put in place. Others include taking the medication provided and taking the injections provided.

I wait for a nurse to bring a wheelchair to me and I’m slowly wheeled out of hospital where I’m super excited but also very apprehensive for Ellen to see me in the state I’m in. I never want her to see me as weak or someone who can’t help provide and contribute to our future, so the past 8 months has been really hard for me mentally on top of everything else. I see Ellen and I start to get emotional, once the nurse has gone and Ellen’s helped me into the car I have a little cry, all the stress and frustrations just came out, there was also relief I was going home, and also a lot of thanks that Ellen was there for me and I was going home.

Going home on the Friday night was just the start of a long road to recovery, physically I may be recovered in 2/3 weeks and I’ll look normal from the outside but underneath I’ve got physical scars and mental scars.

It’s something I’ll carry with me forever.