Continuation of open surgical repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm.

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 23rd, which was about a month later, I had another outpatient appointment. I loved the LGA outpatient, horrible place, and when they said that in view of all the circumstances 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 were potentially there and 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 day. 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 and sort of woke up the next day basically. I must have been asleep most of the night. I remember Terry Wogan was on radio too when I was waking up and during the day which was very comforting, I must admit. So that was on the 27th. The next day, later, well later that evening, I went to the ward where you're woken up every five minutes to have your blood pressure taken and whatever and the only good thing about it was you could press the pain relief button when you needed it because I was very sore and so of course then obviously you get nurses coming to see you and then doctors coming on their rounds and whatever whilst I was in hospital. You know everything seemed to be fine the things they were more worried about were my bowel movement basically. One of the doctor's little tips was eat marshmallows because that's all, you know, started going. So, you know, some people, it works for some people apparently, but that was his little tip. So, by about the Thursday I was able to sort of get up and wander around and have a shower and whatever. Again, you know, I mean, I was very, very sore obviously and, but they were quite happy with the way the wound had healed up and the progress I was making. So it got to Saturday and then they thought they might be able to let me out the following day. So after early morning rounds on Sunday morning they were told yes I could go home which was great. So I phoned my son who was was coming to get me and he he sat about with me, excuse me, waiting till about half past twelve.