So what happens on surgery day?

I know that many people who are awaiting spinal surgery will never have had any kind of operation before and this being a big one; it’s going to be pretty scary. While I was in hospital and starting to recover, a lady came in for a knee op – she was terrified and mostly because she had no idea what was going to happen. She wasn’t afraid of the operation particularly, or even of the recovery – just the unknown of what would actually happen on surgery day. Funnily enough this has been mentioned to me before so I thought I’d tell you what went on in my hospital and even though different hospitals will vary, at least you’ll have some idea. I hope it’s a help anyway.

Here in the UK, you are usually called in the day before your op – given a bed and a locker and you get to sit there and be visited by a succession of nurses who check your blood pressure and temperature and ask you lots of questions about your general health. They organise some armbands for you with your name and address on (just in case you forget who you are) and give you extra bands for any important allergies. Depending on when your surgery is the following day, they will put a "Nil by Mouth" sign up to show that you are not allowed to eat (its for about 12 hours before surgery). Late in the day they should be able to give you a time for your surgery – mine was set for 11.30 am although this may be delayed or brought forward slightly depending on how the cases before yours go. On this day you may also see the anaesthetist and your surgeon. They both want to check up to make sure you are OK and to explain procedures – if you have questions, they will be happy to answer them. I didn’t actually see the anaesthetist until the morning of my op but only because it just varies a bit from place to place.

On the morning of the op, you will normally be asked to shower and make sure you have no make-up, nail varnish, hair spray or deodorant on – a nurse will come round with another whole bunch of questions about that. You will have to remove any jewellery – although normally they will put tape over wedding rings and you can carry on wearing them. You will have to put on a very fetching hospital gown which does up down the back and gapes to show your assets – don’t worry though – they will mostly be covered by the fetching paper knickers that you also get to wear! After that, they put on some smashing stockings too – they are very tight but prevent DVT so are well worth having. All in all, with your knickers, gown and stockings you suddenly become some high fashion icon (not!)

If you are very nervous, you may get a mild sedative to keep you calm before the operation – no-one wants you to be upset, nervous or frightened by anything that is going to happen to you today. The next thing to happen is that a porter will take you to the operating theatre area – they are very experienced at dealing with nervous patients and keep up a constant chatter to take you mind off things! Their job is to take you into the anaesthetist’s little room. The anaesthetist will have a couple of assistants and often there is music playing – they are very calm and say nice things to you to keep you happy. Your surgeon may pop in to say hello and then the anaesthetist will ask for your arm so he can give you a ‘sharp scratch’ as they insert the anaesthetic. They may ask you to count backwards from 10 – you are lucky if you can get to 8 before you are asleep – yes it really is that fast! Everything else is done while you are asleep and dreaming of happy things and so you really have nothing else to worry about ……..