KONZUKO

So, my surgery was originally scheduled for the 16th of December, 2022,
but the surgery was postponed because there weren’t, when the day came, the day before the surgery,
there weren’t enough beds for me to be admitted to the hospital for the surgery,
so they postponed it,
and just the state the NHS is in currently is a very dire state,
so they couldn’t specify when the date would be available,
and so I knew that, which was very concerning for me,
because I was on medication,
I was on Fortisips for two weeks before this date,
which was meant to be the 16th of December, right,
so I was meant to be on those drinks only,
the meal replacement drinks,
for Crohn’s disease and other of those types of illnesses and diseases,
so what this meant was I would have to wait indefinitely without a fixed date,
and continue on these Fortisips,
and so what that transpired to be was I was on the Fortisips for a whole month, until they scheduled me a new date, which was the 3rd of January.

I came in on the day before, and I just did all the usual stuff, came in,
but then it got postponed again,
because when it came to the day, the person who, you know, they do surgeons, they do multiple surgeries in a day,
but this person had cancer, and this is, he’s a colorectal surgeon,
so I believe he said it was stomach cancer,
and it took them a longer time than they expected,
so they couldn’t fit me in that day,
so they postponed it for another day,
and the thing is, I was meant to take a bowel prep,
so laxatives to make you go to the toilet lots, and clear the system of, you know, any poop and whatever,

and then you fast,
you know, you don’t eat anything or drink anything past a certain time before the surgery,
so I had to do that the first time, on the 16th of December, when it was postponed, before it was postponed,
and they called me, you know, when I’d already taken half of the bowel prep,
and then I had to do that again, in January, the day before the new date for the surgery,
and so when we went to new date, when we had the actual surgery,
because they didn’t postpone it again for a third time,
I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before,
because I just kept my fast going,
but that wasn’t, it was a thing where they didn’t really care,
or, and so, I don’t know if care is the word,
but what it meant was, they made me do an enema, before the actual surgery,
which I actually, I don’t understand why,
because I’d done the bowel prep,
and I think I’d only had water,
I only had water in that period, fluids,
so it was really annoying to have to have, in the night, you know, this nurse come,
I believe it was like, early morning, because I had the enemas,
because they had the enemas so many times, it’s, it’s confusing me, when,
but, in which instance, but let’s just say that this was early in the morning,
the nurse comes, and she’s like, lay down,
she puts some sheets there, like I said, this early morning, the day of the surgery,
and she puts this bottle with this tube at the top,
and she inserts it into my rectum, and squeezes all the liquid inside to my rectum,
and she’s telling me, relax,
you know, this, imagine a random woman comes into your area, in the hospital, on the ward,
and she’s told you to lie down, and relax,
and stick something inside, deep inside your arse,
and squeezes the liquid in there,
so, you know, almost immediately, I run to the toilet,
you know, and you’re pooping out all this stuff,
which, which, which, like I said, it annoyed me,
because what it amounted to was just a lot of liquid,
you know, just a lot of liquid, again,
it wasn’t, because I hadn’t eaten or done anything,
so I don’t understand why I was made to get an enema,

but, and this was only the first instance where I don’t understand why I’m having to get something like this,
but you’ll find out there’s more instances of this,
okay, so that’s that,
and so I got the surgery, and that day, as you could imagine,
it’s never, what happens is they say,
oh, the surgery will be in the morning,
you need to be ready for seven, you know, 7am, this sort of thing,
surgeries are never at 7am,
it’s rarely I’ve ever been a surgery,
maybe it’s because I’m just never the first one,
but in my case, it was always ends up, you end up,
because you have to fast, and you can’t drink or eat,
you end up staying dehydrated until,
you know, deep into the, not deep into the evening, but into the evening, into the afternoon,
so as I say, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, around that time,
which is what happened to me in this case,
and, but before that, at 11am or something, many hours before the actual surgery,
different doctors come in from the surgical team,
and to tell you what’s happening, and to say stuff,
and the main doctor, I’d say, that comes in,
as important as the anesthetist,
because usually the anesthetist gets you to sign,
the contract for your surgery,
and you have to know what you’re getting,
and so they make you say it in your own words,
and the anesthetist explains,

okay, what type of pain relief will you get after the surgery,
and there was two types of pain relief that he was offering,
and one’s the PCA, the morphine pump,
and the other was the injection into the spine, the spinal injection,
and he, what he said is that the spinal injection, he prefers it,
because it’s a very effective pain relief,
that lasts a good amount of time,
and unlike the morphine pump, morphine interferes with the,
your recovery, because it slows down your digestive system,
and your bowel, it slows it down,
but from my experience, speaking to a nurse that I know,
and other experiences of people who’ve had epidurals,
now this is an epidural,
because I spoke to him about this, I asked him,
it’s not an epidural, but it’s sort of similar,
because they’re doing injections into your spine,
and there’s been lots of instances where, you know, people get epidurals,
and they have long-term pain, and back pain issues, because of it,
which I was very concerned about,
because the big thing with these surgeries isn’t necessarily the big wound,
and the big actual surgical thing that they do,
it’s always the small things which plague you for the rest of your life,
it’s always the small things, just a little thing that changed, that they cut there,
and it damaged this thing, so I was concerned about that,
so I opted for the morphine pump, and I told him so, but he said that the spinal injection, you know, it’s like one in 1000 chance of it going wrong,
but to be honest, I didn’t quite trust him in this instance,
because I have, every time I’ve done a similar surgery,
because I’ve had a hemicolectomy before, and other similar surgeries,
where they’ve been into my small bowel, and, you know, done resections,

I’ve had the morphine pump, and things have gone well, they’ve always gone well,
so I’m not, if it’s not broke, I’m not trying to fix it,
and so that was all cool,
when it came time for the surgery,
I was walked down with the nurse, and we walked down to the surgery,
you know, other times I’ve been wheeled, I’ve been, they’ve gotten a porter,
and I’ve been taken in the bed down,
but I guess in this situation, they just, we just had decided to do something differently,
because I could walk at the beginning, going into the hospital, I could walk, so it was fine,
and so I go into the hospital, and I knocked the hospital into the surgery, surgical room,
and this was like room three, room four, I remember there were a bunch of different rooms,
and they were telling me how that room is meant for obese people,
designed for obese people, who are getting sort of gastric band, gastric bypass surgeries,
so everything was quite big, and oversized,
and so that’s why, when they were using sort of the blood pressure armband, it wasn’t fitting me,
they had to get a smaller one,
and certain things were just designed for people who have a lot of weight, and a lot of mass,
and that’s another thing they told me,
is that because I’m a slim, thick guy, you know,
I’d also done the liquid only special Crohn’s disease, you know, shakes for a month, surgery,
there were a lot less complications involved,
because, just because of that, you know, my weight, and the other, and the drinks,
compared to other people who, you know, smoke, heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, overweight,
there was a lot of concerns, and complications that can come with the recovery,
and so I’m waiting in surgery, I’m greeted in the surgery room,
and I’m greeted by the nurse, and they ask me all the same questions they do,
they have to verify, what’s your name, what’s your hospital number,
they give you a wristband, so it sort of labels you like a prison inmate,
and you keep that wristband on throughout your stay at the hospital,
and it has your hospital number, your date of birth, and your name,
so they know that you’re there, giving you the right, and the correct medicines,
and injections, whatever, that the doctors have prescribed,
and so, there, I get onto the bed, and then they start, you know, putting, testing things,
putting the blood pressure band,
and what they needed to do is put a cannula in, and I’m very difficult to cannulate,
when, especially when I’m dehydrated,
but actually, and I’m not that, if I’m had a good drink of, you know, water,
well, I just had breakfast, and I’m not that difficult to cannulate,
it’s just in those circumstances where I am, I’ve been fasting,
and I’m very difficult to cannulate, to put cannula in,
and so, they did that,
but the anesthetist was quite good at doing so, when lots of other people had failed,
so he managed to do it,
and one of the nurses was joking with me, you know, making jokes about,
I think we were talking about being nervous, and I was like, am I scared,
and I must have twisted the joke into, because she was talking about how she did get surgery as well,
I think I was talking about being scared, because when I, last time I had the surgery, I came in,
and I just have a sort of deadpan look on my face,
but the nurses were like, assuming that I was scared,
and he’s like, don’t worry, you have nothing to worry about,
but I wasn’t scared, I was quite comfortable,
you know, I’m just going to be put to sleep, like, what do I have to be scared about,
you guys are doing all the work here,
and so, I was saying to this nurse, now, when she was joking about being scared,
is that, you know, and when she had the surgery, how she was scared,
I said, well, you know, you work in these situations, and this is your occupation,
so you know the type of jokers that you work with every day,
so of course you’d be scared,
and you know, it was funny, people, you know, they’re laughing,
and she strangled me playfully, the nurse was black,
she was Nigerian, by the way,
so this is the type of person who feels obligated to,
it feels like they can touch a patient like that, because we’re both black,
okay, and you know, she’s asking me, you know, what country I’m from, and all this stuff,
you know, this is what black people do, okay,
and it gets down to where I’ve been cannulated, I’m lying down,
they tell me to position myself, and I position myself,
and then they put the oxygen mask on,
I believe that they want you to breathe in a certain amount of oxygen to oxygenate your blood cells up to a certain point before they give you the general anesthetic,
this is what I believe, because every time they do this is they put the oxygen mask,
and they tell me to breathe in deeply,
and I think I’ve seen something similar to this before,
I haven’t asked about it, but I assume this is what they’re doing,
so they did that, and I was telling,
I think I was speaking to the anesthetist about how before they had to use the nitrous oxide or whatever to put me to sleep,
and then cannulate me, because I was so difficult to cannulate,
but he was, he reiterated that there are risks involved with that,
so they’d rather avoid that,
and so he avoided that, and then it came the time for them to put the general anesthetic,

and for me, you know, I’ve had some good experiences with general anesthetic,
where, you know, they give it, and then you drift off,
and it’s all like, oh, this is a little bit, for those few seconds, it’s a little bit exciting,
you know, it’s quite exciting to have something affecting you like that,
it was a drug, and, but this time, it wasn’t like that at all,
he said, you know, we’re putting in the general anesthetic now, it puts in,
and it stung like hell, like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life before,
like, because I know general anesthetic usually hurts,
it usually does sting when they inject it into you,
but this stung, you know, now I’m imagining,
is this what happens when they put people on death row, you know, and they inject them with all these,
and that’s, is that what they’re feeling, because boy, and it stung so bad,
I wanted to move, or like, I was moaning,
but he was sort of, the nurse was sort of keeping me held down,
and keeping the oxygen mask on my face, and sort of keeping me from moving,
and the way they did it as well, that made me assume and think that,
wow, they knew this was going to happen, they knew it was going to be this painful,
because they were securing me down,
and because it was so painful, I didn’t get that whole experience of drifting off that I’ve had before,
actually, no, instead I was in excruciating pain, and then boom, I wake up,
and where was I, did I, I can’t remember if I woke,
you see, now here’s where things get a bit hazy,
because in the past, I’ve woken up in the recovery lounge,
so there’ll be beds there, there’s space for beds,
and usually as a patient, you’re just waiting there, recovering until you wake up,
and when you wake up, they take you back to your ward,
where you actually do all the proper recovery with all the nurses, and all that stuff,
but I can’t remember what happened here,
it’s like, actually, I literally can’t remember anything,
so I’m going to assume I was in the recovery, where I woke up,
because that’s what typically happens,
and then I was probably drifting in and out of sleep,
because that’s usually what happens with the general anaesthetic,
and then I was back on the ward,
okay, because there was this one woman who told me,
she saw me when I left surgery,
she saw me two weeks after that, when I was going through it, recovering,
and then she saw me near the end, which was the morning of the day, where I was leaving,
I remember, and I remember her telling me this,
and I found it so fascinating, that she saw all stages,
she was a phlebotomist, and she’s the one of the people who take bloods,
it’s their job to take bloods from patients, and that’s their only job,
and I found that fascinating.