On a journey together
Another operation at King’s hospital this Thursday for the ‘carotid balloon occlusion test’ has been cancelled with 2 days to go!
Someone from Kings called me at 3.15pm to say the operation was cancelled again and again giving the reason that they didn’t have a bed for me on Thursday.
A date for the main op still can’t be put into the diary until we have the results from this test, so it’s seems it just a waiting game for the time being and life just carries on as normal!
I received a letter yesterday giving me a new provisional date of next Thursday 17 October, for the ‘carotid balloon occlusion test’. This will be at Kings hospital. I will also need to attend next Monday for a pre-op when I should hopefully find out more information about what to expect on the day.
Thanks again for all your support and prayers.
After expecting to go into Kings tomorrow for the day, for the ‘carotid balloon occlusion test’ they have just cancelled the op at 4pm this afternoon, not happy!
I have chased the hospital all week to get details of when I need to go in and the school has also been great in allowing Sue to have the day off to come with me. After hearing nothing all day, I called the hospital at 3.45pm this afternoon to ask what’s going on, for them to call me back 10 minutes later to tell me the operation tomorrow have been cancelled, giving the reason they didn’t have a bed for me tomorrow and that the doctor woulds call me in the next couple of days to rearrange it.
As you might image I’m just a little bit annoyed! I’ll let you know as soon as I know more.
After nearly 2 weeks since the operation was postponed, life has got back to some sort of normality for us as a family. I have had 2 full weeks at work and Sue has managed to settle in with her new class of year 3 children.
Today (Saturday 28 September) I received a letter from Kings Hospital giving me a date of next Friday 4 October for these further investigations. I’m not sure of any details yet or how long this will take yet, but I will call the hospital on Monday to get these details.
What I do know is that I will be having a ‘carotid balloon occlusion test’ which will test to see if I need to have a stent put into one of these arteries in my neck (A stent is a small mesh tube that’s used to treat narrow or weak arteries). We will then hopefully know the next steps. I’ll keep you all informed as and when I know anything further news.
Thanks again for all your support and prayers at this time.
We’ve just had a great weekend celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary on Saturday. Sue and myself had a lovely Turkish meal out in Orpington, whilst the kids had organised there own evenings at various locations. Sue was up with the belly dancing around the restaurant while I was ducking my head hoping the belly dancer wouldn’t try to get me up dancing. Fortunately I got away with not getting up. I have also been getting myself ready for my hospital stay with books and lots of movies loaded onto my iPad to while away my time in hospital BUT!
With 1 day to go I have just had a call this morning at 10.30am from one of the surgeons at Guys to tell me that they need to postpone my operation tomorrow and potentially postponed for 6 weeks. All this has come about after a second CT scan I had last Friday where the scan showed that there is an issue with some of the blood vessels in my neck that aren’t behaving in the way they should, and so they need more time to investigate this issue further. This issue only affects a very small percentage of the population, I am one of them! If they had gone ahead without this knowledge then I would have stood a far great possibility of having a stoke and the surgeon weren’t prepare to take this risk on me.
So although this is a shock as I am totally ready to just get on with it and I have my movies ready! I also grateful that the professionals want to get it right and that they want to be fully prepared and have every issue covered. The next step now is that at some point in the next 2 weeks I will need to go to Kings Hospital to have a stent put in this artery in my neck (A stent is a small mesh tube that’s used to treat narrow or weak arteries). After this they can then decided if they can go ahead or if they need to do further test.
We now need to undo all the plans we have made, for food for the next 2 weeks as friends have put a rota together to feed Sue and the kids for the next 2 weeks and work wise, both Sue’s work and my work have been fantastic about getting this sorted.
Thank you everyone who has been supporting us so far both practically and in your prayers and I will keep you all updating to as and when any tests and new op dates happen.
Thanks Neil
Dad and Dan!