AAA preoperative journey.

Well, first of all, as I say, I went the following day and they told me a little bit about it because probably like most 65 year old men, I knew absolutely nothing about aortic aneurysms. So, you know, I've done the bowel cancer screening stuff that you get when you reach this wonderful age as well, but that's all self-administered. So, excuse me while I read, I've got this all written down because as moving forward I've had to give talks to people about it so that's why I've got all these dates with such accuracy. so yes so I did I was screened on the 6th of October on the 7th I attended the LGI I had an examination discussing my general health medication I was currently on and basically an overview of what the treatment options were which was, well there's three obviously, there's the open, there's EVR or do nothing at all and then so they gave me an outgoing plan which was what tests I'd have to take but as I was asymptomatic with no symptoms, you know, I didn't feel any problems at all, I just went through them. So on back end of October I did the cardio ordinary exercise to see, you know, that obviously is a operations fitness test. Then after that I had a transthoracic echocardiogram, I had a cardiac ultrasound scan and then in middle of November I went back I went back to get the test results basically after after all that and they tell me that even as I was young and relatively young and fit I quite like that bit that was best news I had it was agreed that because of the way the aneurysm was that OSI would be better than EVAR which so we had a little bit of discussion about you know five percent of people can die when they have open surgery and whatever but and you'd be in hospital longer and all those sorts all those sort of discussions so that was the feeling at that stage but obviously I had to go to the vascular surgeon at MDT so they could have big discussions about me not that I was there so they would decide on what the outcome would be which which was fine. They said basically they hoped to get me into hospital before Christmas because this was on November the 11th but I said I didn't want to go into hospital before before Christmas because my son and his then girlfriend were expecting their first child on Boxing Day and I wanted to be around for that so we put that off so on December the 3rd the 23rd which was about a month later I had another outpatient appointment I loved the LGA outpatient horrible place when they said that in view of all the circumstances they would they they would do an open operation and then obviously there's a little bit more detailed discussion about what was involved you know the risks that that were potentially there and would I would I sign the form basically and say yes that's what I wanted to do. So yeah I agreed with that and then I had to go back on the 31st of December for my pre-operative assessment and talk to the anaesthetist about he was going to tell me how he was going to send me to sleep. I had another chest x-ray and then I was placed on the list for the for admission date. Obviously you wonder whether it's going to happen then because with the operating theatres and ICU beds and whatever. Anyway, I got a letter and I went in on the January the 26th, which was a Monday I think, and had the operation the next day at about nine o'clock. I was advised it would be a long operation, about four hours, and when it got over six. Not that I knew anything about it. My boys were getting a bit worried because it was, you know, longer than taken. So, fortunately, there was an ICU bed available, so I was moved straight into ICU. I sort of woke up the next day, basically. I must have been asleep most of the night. I remember Terry Wogan was on Radio 2 when I was waking up during the day, which was Very comforting, I must admit.