VATS assisted decortication

Good afternoon. Would you tell us your name? My name is Mark Gillespie. Mark, what kind of surgery did you have? I came in for surgery to clear fluid from my lung. I originally came in and had a chest strain put in which couldn't remove all of the fluid. Subsequently the hospital decided to operate to clear out the rest of the lung and other infectious materials that were hanging around. Just to update that Mark had his day 4 after left video-assisted thoracoscopy, advantage of empyelema and deportication or what was your experience from the surgery? From the surgery it was very very scary for me first time in ICU first time having proper surgery so I went up in the afternoon, came back in the evening and was in ICU. So this surgery went fine, I felt okay. Lots of attention from the nursing staff, the ratio of nursing staff to patients in ICU is obviously it's like one to two or one to three, so got lots of attention. It was very reassuring and obviously a lot of expertise with the nursing staff there. Lots of visits from the doctors and so So it made me feel more comfortable in a situation I was very unfamiliar with and which I said was quite frightening. Was there something unexpected? Yeah, so I came back late in the evening. On the following morning, the medical team wanted to mobilize you as quickly as possible to get you up and about to get the lungs working. and so I was up at 6 a.m. and passed out, so I fell back on the bed and came round, I don't know, maybe 20-30 seconds later with a whole team around me and doctors and lots of noise and alarms going, so again pretty scary, but lots of reassurance from the medical team and they stabilized me quite quickly, so a So a couple of hours later, I tried again to get me into the chair and that time I said I immediately knew I didn't feel quite comfortable, I sat down in the chair, began to feel very lightheaded and dizzy, cold sweats and vomited and again the next thing I knew I was coming round to alarms going off and the full medical team around me. was an extremely frightening experience because I had no idea where I was. But again, the team calmed me down pretty quickly, got me in bed, and within an hour or two I was feeling fine again. But, yeah, very unusual experience and quite scary, but, you know, within a few hours I was sort of quite comfortable again. And, you know, I want to recover as quickly as possible, so I was keen to try again. So, but it hit my confidence obviously, but again the team were there, the physios, the nurses, doctors, so all the staff were very supportive and encouraging for me to try again. So yeah, but all very interesting and new experiences. Yeah, we know that for infection you had to be operated and actually had some keyhole surgery. Yes. Were you pleased with actually the size of the scars and so far? I haven't actually seen the size of the scars so I don't know if I, I was told that they may need to open me up a bit more so if I had the keyhole surgery, bearing in mind what I was told by the surgeon about how much material had to be removed, I think I've been quite lucky to be sitting up talking and walking around two or three days later. understand it's fairly significant surgery so you know for me to be sitting here now off ICU within 48 hours and walking around I think it's I'm happy with that outcome yeah. And just the last thing what would you recommend to other patients? I think just make sure you communicate in a very open and honest with everything that's going on ask questions everyone's been very very willing to answer and provide information and so yeah just talk, ask questions, be open, provide as much information as you can as well and yeah try not to worry and support the medical staff as well. There's a lot of people in here, a lot of sick people in here and they are very very busy doing a good job and they need your support as much as you need theirs.