They say it comes in three’s…

They, whoever 'they' are, were not wrong…

Oh my, so much has happened in the last couple of weeks since my last blog. I don’t know where to start.

I’ll start with the easiest to explain… my good ol papaya.

Recovery is going ok right now as I type this. It hasn’t been great though as I got struck down with an infection in week two which has set me back a couple of weeks.

It’s funny, well, no, it’s not really funny, nothing about this has been funny, but I was doing really well before the infection hit. I was feeling really good, pain was pretty much non-existent and I was happy with how it was going.

I was feeling so good, I was starting to do things that I didn’t think was pushing it, but Matt and my mum will tell you a different story I'm sure. One day my mum uttered the words (I’m not saying she’s a voodoo witch or anything, but…) ‘you need a dose of pain to remind you that you’ve had major surgery and to slow you down a bit’. Then voila, major pain… Thanks Mum.

The only way I can describe how I felt on the Tuesday morning when the infection took hold is, think of the worst hangover you’ve ever had, you know, that one with the headache where just slightly lifting your head off the pillow hurts, along with feeling sick, going hot and cold and shivery? Times that feeling by about 50 then add pelvic/abdominal pain and we might just about be there. It was horrid. The worst bit though was that I wanted/needed to be sick, but wasn’t allowed to because of the stitches. Stopping sneezing was bad enough, but fighting against my body when it wanted to throw up was just grim.

I ended up back at the hospital and was given a dose of strong antibiotics which took about six days to make me start feeling better. In those six days I did absolutely nothing. I hid from the world and discovered Homeland and Orange is the New Black (how good are they!?)

So where am I up to today? I am feeling loads better and finally managed my first walk this morning (2 Nov) to take Isabelle to school. Progress, at last. This should have probably happened two weeks ago and now I should be at running a marathon stage, but no, a walk will have to do me. And despite me saying to Matt I would be able to walk to school AND back, he insisted he picked me up at the school and bring me back home. I huffed about it, but it was the right thing to do as by the time I got to school I had that horrible dragging feeling in the papaya (anybody who has given birth will now be saying, oh yes, THAT feeling). A bit like the world is going fall out of your under carriage.

So that’s the papaya ticked off. 

Now bear with me a bit here so I can update you on the airboot that I am currently wearing. 

Yes, you think that’s for my knee don’t you? It’s not.

Trying to make it look cool! Trying being the operative word

The Foot

Let me take you back to August 2015 where I started a secondment from Mace working at The Co-operative in Manchester. I was based at The Co-op’s lovely new head office, One Angel Square. For those that know the office, it is located right by Victoria Train station in Manchester.

Typically, the train services to Victoria from Newton le Willows didn’t really work with my hours, so I opted to get the train to Manchester Piccadilly, across the other side of Manchester, which wasn’t a problem, because I had my new fitbit, so the 20 minute walk across Manchester would be fine (and count towards my daily step goal, bonus). Also, I love walking, especially through Manchester. 

I even sacrificed fashion to wear my trainers with my suits so I didn’t aggravate my knee (we will get to that particular body part in a minute).

After about a week of walking across Manchester, I started to notice a pain in the ball of my foot just below my big toe. The best way to describe it was that I was walking with a marble in my shoe. In true Kirsty way, I thought ‘oh, it will be nothing and it’ll go away soon’. It didn’t, so I changed my trainers because I thought maybe that was the problem. No, still there.  

By now I was walking differently. I was walking on the right side of my foot to ease the pain with the big toe. The pain in my toe was so bad now that even my duvet cover resting on my toe was hurting me.

It is worth noting at this point that the toe problem was on the same leg as the knee problem.

Are you keeping up…..? 

In the meantime, I was having physio on my knee, which had started to improve loads, in fact, the knee pain was suddenly non-existent. So I mentioned my toe to my physio Vicky and the fact that my knee had stopped hurting and questioned if it was because I was walking different.

She had a look and moved it around and I swear, I nearly kicked her in the face it hurt that much. She couldn’t believe I had been walking around on it and decided to work on it as she thought that it may have just been inflamed from walking more than I normally do. She also queried if it may be a stress fracture. We decided to leave it a week and see how it was after treatment. 

I’ll tell you what happened after the treatment, it felt good and pain free, for four whole hours. This was the day I mentioned earlier in my blog when I said I had one pain free day since January. I was fab, no knee pain, no toe pain, woohoooo. 

It was short-lived.

The pain from the toe now was constant and pretty relentless and Vicky said we needed to assume it was a stress fracture because it wasn’t responding to treatment and when I started my pulse shock therapy on my knee with my consultant, I should mention it to him. I didn’t have time to get an x-ray but Vicky said it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway because they don’t put a cast on broken toes, they leave it to heal on its own……

The knee

For those that have known me since school, you will remember back then I was a pretty good middle/long distance runner and I was tipped for big things. That was until my knees decided to blow up when I was about 15 and a couple of knee operations later I was told I couldn’t run again and that was the end of any athletics career I may have dreamed of.

So my knees have never been my friend and in January this year I started feeling pain and yet again, brushed it off and thought it will be nothing and it will get better. I must think I’m some sort of self-healing machine hey!?

Anyway, after a session with what I think was a pretty poor physiotherapist locally, I decided to make use of my BUPA cover through work and go and see a specialised consultant after my doctor referred me. 

I was signed up for Tough Mudder and I needed to start training and the knee was so painful I couldn’t do any sort of running and doing day to day things like kneeling on the floor to change Adam’s nappy and walking up stairs was really painful. It was now a constant pain.

The clinical diagnosis is:

• Patellofermoral pain
• Proximal patellar tendinopathy  

Physio started and after a few sessions and limited improvement, the consultant decided to scan my knee. He then saw the true extent of damage to the tendon (he showed me on the screen and all I saw was a massive hole, which he told me wasn’t good, so I’ll take his word for it) and suggested pulse shock therapy to promote faster recovery. He also told me that Tough Mudder was out of the question.

For those that aren’t aware of Pulse Shock Therapy it’s a set of three, approximately 5 minute sessions, where the consultant basically holds this horrible machine against my knee bone and it hammers away like a woodpecker. This then somehow promotes blood flow to the area which then helps the tendon heal. 

I don’t do bones *cringe* so this was procedure was horrid, even if it is only for five minutes.

Short term pain, long term gain n all that…

When you have pulse shock therapy you aren’t able to exercise in between sessions so you have the best chance of healing. So to limit rest time (who says that!? I am actually a freak of nature aren’t I) I decided to have the pulse shock therapy straight after the papaya surgery as I would be forced to rest anyway so in theory killing two birds with one stone…. Nobody told me there would be a third bird.

  

Knee and toe (I'm sure there is a song in here somewhere...)

Now we have the background to the right leg from hell, I can get you up to date.

When I went to see the consultant for the first pulse shock session, I told him about the toe and he took a look and could see how painful it was. He then told me I needed to get an airboot so the toe was completely rested and he would take a look at it the week after at my second pulse shock session and if it hadn’t improved, I would have an MRI scan.

My face when he told me about the airboot was a picture. I was one week post-op and despite not really being able to move anywhere anyway, he was now making me wear an airboot…. FFS.

The following day was ‘Infection Tuesday’ – insert infection and hospital trip here. Imagine my face now. This was not a good week.

The following week, no toe improvement so the consultant referred me for an MRI scan, which was booked for the following week, straight after my third and final pulse shock session. This was yesterday (1 Nov).

MRI scan complete (the MRI machine isn’t a fun experience is it!?), quick look at the picture by the consultant. ‘Yeah, your toe is damaged in two places (of course it is). You need to see me on Tuesday next week when the radiographer has looked at the scan properly’.

If I was a dog, I swear they would have put me down by now.

But wait……. It doesn’t stop there…… Not content with having a bust big toe, a bust knee and a recovering papaya…. I wake up at 5am last week and decided to nip to the loo. You have to step down two steps to our bathroom. I take the first step and the ankle of my good(!) leg, decides to give way! I quickly whipped my bad foot around to try and stop me falling and WHACK, hit my two toes on the bottom of the baby gate, you know the METAL baby gate. How I didn’t wake the whole house up I will never know but you can now have the vision of me jumping around in the bathroom with a first in my mouth trying not to scream. Just fabulous.

Here is the image of baby gate toe about an hour after it happened.

You couldn’t make this shit up hey.

This is my real life and not fiction, I swear.

And honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the last couple of weeks with other things going on in my life at the minute. But that’s a story for another day.

But hey, you know what, I'm still laughing... just about. If I didn’t laugh about it I’d cry and luckily, I like laughing (a bit like that girl in big brother years ago who liked blinking).

I’ll keep you posted about toe-gate.

Thanks for sticking with this ridiculous airboot ridden story to the end! 

Big hugs xx

So long, farewell....

I started to come back to life following the operation, those who have had general anaesthetic will know the feeling... that floaty, where am I, what the hell is going on feeling... 

As soon as I could speak, or thought I could, I was trying to say, 'what did they do?' It took about five goes until the nurse heard my whimpering's... Being 'impatient Annie' (as my mother calls me), I wanted to know NOW!! 

I then managed to say, 'did they do the hysterectomy' to which she replied, something along the lines of ‘yes, love and a little bit more too’. I of course thought that meant my ovaries were outta there and me and Mrs Menopause were going to become good friends. 

Fortunately, my ovaries were still in place, and what she meant by a little bit more was that I had had my front wall (prolapsed bladder) and also my back wall fixed, which hadn't been a problem before, but had fallen down in the year since I last saw my consultant. I think my love for lifting weights probably hadn't helped.

So now, I can happily say that my 'papaya flue' is as it should be, my uterus has left the building, my ovaries are just hanging around, probably wondering where the uterus has gone, and I'm hopefully not going to get to know Mrs Menopause for another 10 or 12 years (yeah, can't wait for that, said no woman ever), but actually, knowing my luck I will be in the 50% that get it within 5 years, probably next week...

So recovery..... Urgh! 

Hi I'm Kirsty, I never sit down, ever, I even think I am doing things in my sleep. I am a full on mum when I'm not working, I try and be a good wife, I play netball, lift weights, travel for work, I see my friends.... I DON'T STOP... I don't know how to.... 

Until now... 

I literally have no choice. Well, I do, don't do as I'm told, and probably end up back in hospital. And I don't want that, not even for a second. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (no pun intended). It may be a 6/8 oh ok, probably in total a 12 week tunnel... but there’s a light.  

So here is the official recovery... well, how I interpret it from my first week and a half recuperating:

• Do nothing, nada, nowt... in fact, don't even think about doing anything, talk about doing anything, and don’t even JOKE about doing anything.  
• Don't drive for 6 weeks. *actually sobs*
• Don't even think about lifting, dancing, laughing, and for the first week, communicating with your children. In fact, if they come in to the same room as you, leave. *sobs again*
• Do your exercises, ooooh, yeah, I like this one.... Oh...rock your knees from side to side ten times and lift your bum up and down.... not a weight, squat or a funky soundtrack in sight. 
• Oh yeah, the lifting your bum up and down just reminded me of another, no sex, for 6 weeks. This of course means it’s all I can think about now. What’s that saying, ‘you always want what you can’t have’?
• Oh wait, there is a good one here, no housework (although if Matt was reading this now he would probably say, no change there then...). Again though, I’m dying to hoover. This feeling is a first, but tell me I can’t do it… (Matt’s missing a trick here isn’t he…?)
• One of the painful things is the random belly burning that has been happening. I must admit over the last couple of days it hasn't happened but imagine the burn from severe sunburn on your belly (complete with being hot to touch), then add the same burning feeling inside your belly too... you might just be slightly close to this horrid feeling. I can only imagine how women who have had an abdominal hysterectomy with stitches feel.
• Don't SNEEZE, don't EVER sneeze. Oh my, I have sneezed on three occasions. It's horrific. This wasn't actually in my official recovery notes of what to do, but that moment you feel a sneeze coming and the colour drains out of you with FEAR... What is going to burst, fly out, or explode… arrrrghhhh! I can confirm nothing did happen that drastic (well as far as I know) but jeeeeez, it’s not fun. 
• Similar wind expulsion that is a no no, not that you have much choice (mainly because during the operation they use a gas inside you (in my head, I'm blown up like a puffa fish on the surgery table), but oh my, it’s the most painful thing ever…yes, I am talking about shooting tiny puffs of glitter, that sound like unicorns laughter and smell like rainbows, out of my bottom. The PAIN!? This has by far been the most painful part of the recovery. Honestly, it feels like somebody is shooting fire arrows up my ass. Oh, but not just that, wind pain in my shoulders too, which the doctor did warn me about because of the gas/puffa fish thing during surgery.

That's pretty much my experience of the recovery a week and a half in. But I have to say, the absolutely amazing part of the recovery has been the wonderful friends and family who have sent me cards, flowers, postcards with clouds on, chocolates, cakes (yes that amazing cake that literally, let the uterus out of the bag) and well wishes.  It is humbling and I am honestly so grateful. My house has looked like a florist this week and it’s been amazing. They have lifted my spirits and been beautiful to look at while I have been shoving cake, chocolates and sweets in my mouth. (I'll be cursing you all in 6 weeks when I'm 20 stone. Oh God no, not another blog to get fit).

Thank you Chris Roche for this fab cake.

And I have to do a PDA at this point, even though, after the first post he hasn't read this blog because it's about 'papaya's n that'. (I've changed the word he used to papaya as his word is even more offensive than the 'v' word). But Matt my husband has been an absolute star and I don't actually know what I would have done without him. We still have a long road ahead but so far he has been (and I'm going to quote what he said to me last night) my 'celibate home help'. It's so hard for me stepping back and not helping but he has literally stepped up and is doing EVERYTHING. From getting the kids dressed, to school/childminder, cooking tea, tidying the house, keeping me topped up with brews, bringing my dinner to me, food shopping, just everything that we normally do as a team.

So THANK YOU MATT if you ever read this! I owe you a weekend (probably a week to be fair) away playing golf.... but not for another 10 weeks at least. Actually, he said he won’t read this so he’ll miss out on his golf offer…..

Right, I've waffled on enough. My next post isn't going to be papaya related for a bit of a break, but I will keep you updated on my progress. I also have another post in mind about the kids during all of this change, including berry-gate, which is a funny story, well, it is now that enough time has passed, it was far from funny at the time.... on day 2 of being out of hospital... 

I'm going to have some fun with my next post... I’m now at the point where I’m waking up in the night with blog content going around in my head. I have a lot of waffle to share. 

Feel free to use the comments box to tell me to bore off at any point…

Have a good weekend everybody.

#papaya

#unicorns

#sharingiscaring

#headinthecloudsKC

Instagram: @headinthecloudsKC

From my netball team mates @NewtonpanthersNB

From my in laws

From Vicky C

From my mummy

From Brigeroony

Couldn't post any pictures of the chocolates/cakes/sweets... come on, this is me, they were in my tummy in a nanosecond... 

xx

Let the surgeon see the Papaya

The week before the operation I got told about the potential papaya hysterectomy at my pre op appointment. Before this I didn't actually realise you could do that op through 'that' entrance. But to be fair, I didn't really know that much about hysterectomies at all, apart from the experience of a good friend of mine who had been through it.

I talked the pros and cons through with my husband and he rightly said, 'Kirsty, nobody but you can make this decision.' He also said, 'you need to think about the fact that this operation takes your option away to have children again and even though we had made the decision that we weren't having any more (snip snip), he said I need to think about if something ever happened to him, or if we split up, would I want children then?

Now that is depressing as hell, but he was right, and in true Kirsty style, this is how I worked it out...

Are we going to split up in the next 12 months? - No, we are very happy right now and I can't see that happening.

So then the thought process went - if we split up in say 12 months, I'd then be 36 years old. I'd then need to meet someone new to have said baby with, that could take a year or more, so I'd be 37/38. I then wouldn't have a baby with someone straight away, so now I'm 39.... Then, wait a minute *thinks back to being pregnant*. Sack this off, NO MATTER WHAT, I WILL NOT BE HAVING ANY MORE CHILDREN. Decision made.

 Of course this wasn't the only thing I needed to think about. There was also the risks of the operation, things that could potentially go wrong and also the menopause.  I did a lot of research and made sure I had all the questions in my head answered. I found a great website/forum called The Hysterectomy Association which was amazing. It provided answers to all my questions and had a forum where ladies shared their experiences. I was armed with info and ready for surgery.... 

The morning of the operation came and surprisingly, I was really calm about it. Matt and the kids got up early and took me to Spire Cheshire Hospital in Warrington and dropped me off. I said a cheery goodbye to them but as I walked away a couple of tears fell from my eyes. 

I wasn't going to see the children for four days and even worse than that the recovery meant that I couldn't give them massive big hugs for a while. My mum used to call me her hugabug because of my love for hugs... I was really going to miss them. 

Bim Williams, my awesome consultant, came to see me and we discussed what was going to happen in surgery. I asked her about the hysterectomy that the nurse had mentioned at the pre op appointment, but she said that wasn't necessarily what was going to happen.

It's important to note that the last time I had seen Bim was well over a year ago when I had my pre op for the op that didn't happen in the previous October. So things may have changed with me, like for example my heavy periods, or the prolapse could have got worse.  I explained the period/anaemia problem to her and we came up with a plan.

My consent form went something like this....

Prolapse fix (front wall)

Plus

Hysteroscopy

and/or

Hysterectomy

Or

Endometrial ablation 

So basically, I was having a prolapse fix for definite and she was having a toot and taking a sample from my uterus then from that would make the decision which action would be best. So basically, I had no idea what would happen and would only find out post-surgery. Yikes!

I was really glad this happened though because it made me realise my true feelings about the hysterectomy. I was a little bit gutted that it might not happen. After everything that had happened this year, I was tired of trying to find something that might work, and the ablation option had the whole 'percentage of success' attached to it. Pah! I just wanted it to be over now and the heavy periods and the anaemia to be gone and wanted to feel like me again.

So off I went down to surgery...... 'Kirsty you are going to feel a little light headed.......5, 4, 3............'

#papaya

#sharingiscaring

xxx