A few of you already know that last summer went a little pear shaped for me.
I went in to hospital for a routine, one day operation, only to come round from the anaesthetic to find myself in more pain than the gall stones were causing in the first place. This pain grew rapidly until I was collapsed on the ward.
Lots of morphine in to my blood stream via a canular gave temporary relief from the pain while waiting for a surgery team to open me up to find out what had gone wrong.
The second operation showed up a damaged bile duct that was causing litres of bile to fill me abdomen and cause excruciating burning pain. I woke up with three pipes coming out of my stomach and some rather unpleasant bags to drain off all this fluid.
Long story short, the summer was rather turned upside down both at home and work and my one day keyhole surgery turned in to a 10 week saga, four weeks in hospital, 5 operations and some rather hideous infections.
Some friends and family are telling me to point the finger of blame and hold the NHS accountable. That’s not for me. Sometimes things go wrong in life and the best measure of any organisation is how things are dealt with once they have gone wrong. Well, the NHS did a fantastic job of looking after me, fixing me and putting the problem right. It was an eye opener, to watch how a hospital operates and realise just what an amazing job is done on the wards. Not just with the daily operation of the hospital, but also the efforts of all the hospital staff to make your stay a little better, with the odd natter, joke, hand-hold and care shown for your general mental health. Even the food was really quite pleasant.
It was tough catching up with everything at work and home but things are back to normal now.
The point of this blog, is to pass on my massive thanks to everybody who helped and supported me and Classic Heroes through a bit of a tricky time. My family were amazing, my 16 year old son Zak made his Dad really proud and rose to occasion both at work and at home. My business partner and his wife offered enormous amounts of both practical and moral help. The staff at Classic Heroes came in to work on the Monday to find me absent. Their effort, support and work were simply above and beyond the call of duty on every level. My final thanks goes out to friends of Classic Heroes who called me, text me and sent cards wishing me well. It really was quite humbling.
Thanks to you all, you know who you are!