August 10th 2011 Part 1

The pain had woken me around 1am. I couldn't lie still and decided to get up and take some paracetamol and tried to get back to sleep. I was in too much pain and in the end had to pace the bedroom and landing to try and ease it although nothing worked. About 3am Craig woke up as I couldn't be quiet any longer as the pain was just too much. I knew I wasn't in labour but I knew now that it couldn't be just muscular pain. 

I was screaming in agony and Craig rang the Delivery Suite as he was worried. They spoke to me quickly and asked us to come straight up and see them. 

We arrived around 4am and I was given codeine (which I wasn't aware I could take until this point) and they tried to fit a cannula in my hand with no luck The midwives listened to the babies heartbeats to check they were ok and all was fine. The pain relief wasn't working and the hard flat bed was very uncomfortable so I was moved onto a ward and given a dose of Pethadine and again another 30 minutes later. It still didn't help the pain so I was offered Entonox (gas and air). This eventually helped with the pain.

Surgeons came to see me and asked for a scan to be done of my abdomen so that they could see what was going on. I was taken down and didn't have to wait very long. It was clear that it was an emergency. The radiographer checked the babies which both looked fine. It was confirmed that we were having a girl and a boy. The girl being on my right hand side and the boy on my left. Our little girl was head down and our little boy was lying diagonally with his feet towards his sister, head up. 

Our babies looked absolutely fine but Craig suddenly saw my right ovary on the screen and as he asked for confirmation that that's what it was, the radiographer explained that there was a large mass on the ovary. She took some still pictures and said she would go and ring the surgeons to discuss. 

It seemed like forever that we were waiting for her to come back. I don't think it was any longer than 10 minutes or so. When the radiographer came back into the room, she explained she wasn't happy with what she saw and had discussed it with the surgeons while looking at the pictures. It looked like there was a cyst on my right ovary the size of a coca cola can 10x5x6cm. I was sent straight back to the ward.

The surgeon came to see me very quickly to explain that the cyst needed to me removed immediately via laparotomy (open abdominal surgery) and that I was on the emergency list for that day. They would try and keep my ovary but explained that they may have to take it out when they opened me up, depending on what was going on. I was asked to sign a consent form and informed that an RTA was on it's way so I they couldn't tell me how long it would be as they didn't know if surgery would be involved. My surgery would last around 1 hour and would be in recovery for around 20-30 minutes. 

I was taken down to theatre around 3:30pm and quickly ushered onto a special bed. I remember saying see you later to Craig and his Mum. They were going to go home to get me some things as I didn't have anything with me. 

As I went into the first room, there were 4 people there explaining how they were going to put me to sleep. I remember as they held the gas mask over my mouth looking at the clock and it was 3:55pm.