haraggan

OK, well, I'm home from the hospital. I went in on Wednesday, June 25, had a bunch of tests and a discussion with my surgeon - who looked disturbingly like David Brent of "The Office" and showed very little interest in answering my questions - and then a conversation with my anesthesiologist (John Cleese) before being tucked away in a rather comfy private room with the generally more-caring nursing staff. I discovered that each bed on the thoracic ward has a bedside "patientline" unit that provides telephone, radio, television, and internet if you buy a card from one of the card machines in the hallways. The one nearest the ward refused to take my money, so I trekked down to the ground floor (fortunately, I had not been asked to change into a hospital medical gown) to collect a 10 card (good for a five-day stay with TV and internet) as well as some illicit snacks. I soon discovered that "internet" was a laughable appellation for a dial-up, no-Java service that accessed about three sites in total and allowed me to do little more than check on whether or not the Yankees had lost the previous day.

On Thursday I was made to change into my hospital gown and a pair of white stockings that are some kind of aid to circulation and are meant to decrease the chance of developing a blood clot while sedentary. They would have looked much better if I had been able to shave my legs beforehand, but nobody warned me. A doctor came in to draw on me with magic marker, so that nobody would accidentally open up the wrong side. Also, an identification bracelet was put on my leg, to match the one on my opposite arm. I don't know why. I wasn't expecting to need to be disassembled. I was taken first to the anesthesia room, where I held a facemask giving me pure oxygen while I was administered various medications by IV drip, including the one that knocked me out. So: nothing like the movies. No black mask looming ominously into the field of vision and being told to count backwards, no circle of masked faces. No view of the operating theatre at all.

I woke up in a ward called the HDU - High Dependency Unit - with one nurse for every two patients. Kristi was there and I was pretty groggy. The surgery had, I suppose, gone OK. I had had an open pleurectomy and bullectomy ("open" meaning they went into me via incision with knives, trucks and implements of mass destruction, as opposed to "keyhole" surgery - done with cameras - orthopedic surgery, in the U.S., I think). I required the more "aggressive" approach for a couple of reasons. Since my diagnosis of Birt Hogg Dube Syndrome, the surgeons had decided to do a more complete pleurectomy on me then originally planned. The pleurectomy strips away a portion of the pleura, the "wallpaper" (Mr. Brent's word) separating the lung from the chest wall. What is left behind is sticky, and holds the lung up in case of future conditions likely to cause a collapse. So instead of just removing a portion of the pleura, they decided to remove all of it. Or as much of it as they could reach. I hope I didn't need it for anything. I wonder if they found any spare change?

The other complication came from the second procedure done to me, the bullectomy. That's the removal of the part of my lung likely to burst and cause a collapse, the bulla. Most people who are inconsiderate enough to develop bulla at least do so nicely at the edges of their lungs, but not me. I've gotta grow mine in the centre, next to the heart. Surrounded by all sorts of big, important arteries. So mine wasn't so easy to get at and amputate and the surgeon needed to be able to be elbows-deep in my chest, apparently. What happens is that this dodgy part of my lung was isolated by stapling it off and then cut out. So one lung is now a bit smaller than the other, and is held closed at one edge by lots of little staples. I was assured that the loss of lung area wouldn't matter (it wasn't really doing me any good, anyway), and that the staples wouldn't set off alarms at airports. I forgot to ask if I could take it home with me, so it's now probably in a jar somewhere, sitting on a shelf. Or it could be the focus of a strange ritual meant to create an anti-matter me of pure evil, but I don't see what use an evil Matt would be unless somebody wants to make it difficult to find certain books at the University of Edinburgh Library.

After a day on the HDU I was returned to the thoracic ward, to discover that I had lost my private room and was now in a room with three other gents. Apparently the private rooms are distributed according to some system I failed to understand that hinged upon women and men not being allowed to share, and my gender was on the losing end of the stick at the time. I spent another five days in the ward, which I'll save for a later post. I'm tired, now, and I hurt too much to type any more.