Recovery

2 weeks post-op today! How time flies when you're having fun....Have just deposited sister at airport and am sitting next to the fire while the dog dozes. Perfect time for a blog post! I seem to have been very lucky in my side effects - I really don't have any complaints to make (which is probably why I'm so late with this update). I would however like to have a serious word with the weather; where the heck is the glorious sunshine we normally get in May when I am on nights or revising for exams??? Never been so fed up of sod's law.

On a more positive note, thank you so much to all you lovelies for your kind messages, flowers, cards and presents. I feel very lucky to have such caring and thoughtful people in my life :D 

OK so a round up of my 2 weeks post-op and various side effects:

Pain: was honestly nothing too bad at all. It was mainly inside the ear itself but also around the site of the internal magnet too - this is higher up than I thought, as it's been tunnelled in further up under my hair. (I thought it was somewhere next to the scar in the shaved patch, but no.) I spent a couple of days religiously taking paracetamol and ibuprofen, then dropped the ibuprofen because it gave me gastritis and hampered my wine-drinking. After a week I was only needing paracetamol about once a day, normally to get off to sleep or when waking up. I couldn't sleep on my left side for about a week but as the pain and inner ear fullness dissipated I have managed to get back to my favourite sleeping position, which is bizarrely a left sided recovery position.

Inner ear fullness: has been the most annoying thing - a mild throbbing and feeling of pressure that was there all the time but worse on bending down etc. It's just blood and fluid in the middle/inner ear and it drains away by itself as everything heals. I've read a few horror stories where people have had icky altered blood draining into their mouth through their Eustachian tubes - thank goodness nothing that gross has happened to me (have a v. low gross-out threshold for a doctor, thanks to 4 months of vascular surgery as F1 - has scarred me for life). 

Balance: I have had the odd feeling of being very slightly "off kilter" - this is really hard to describe but some days, I feel like when I nod my head it's nodding curved instead of straight?? Or like my head is moving too far when I move it. OK I sound bonkers. No true vertigo or dizziness though, just a weird off-kilter feeling. Probably due to the fluid described above. 

sticky out Shrek ear

Swelling: was quite alarming initially. For the first couple of days I had swelling around the front of my ear up the side of my face, and my left ear stuck out a mile and also appeared to be slightly lower than the right... I was starting to think I would need another op to have it pinned back! But 2 weeks later it is almost back to its shapely self. I didn't get a photo of the scar when it was at its most swollen - about 3 days post-op. At that point it felt quite throbby and looked a bit angry, but settled down soon enough. 
Being myopic as well, I really appreciated my contact lenses as my glasses weren't very comfy against the swelling.

Numbness: I was warned my ear would be temporarily numb. This is indeed a very odd feeling - it feels quite numb behind my ear and over the top of the pinna. This will get better over the next few weeks to months as the nerves grow back - it's improving already. Everyone has pointed out that now is the perfect time to get a piercing, especially with my undercut, but I am too much of a wimp! Also I think the CI team might kill me if I pierced my implanted ear then got an infection....

Jaw ache: no-one really warned me about this so I did freak out a little at how sore it was! Jeanette (who had her op about 8 weeks before me) said not to worry, hers was sore too but she had actually forgotten about it! I almost forgot to include it in this list, so it really doesn't last that long. Small mouthfuls of squishy food for the first few days helped. I still get the odd twinge so I will put off going to the dentist for a little bit longer....

Tinnitus: not had any. But then fortunately I don't normally get it unless I have a cold. 

me

Jane Fonda

Disgusting hair: going a week without washing was difficult; by the time the end of the week rolled around I was channelling Jane Fonda circa 1980 and had nearly used up all my dry shampoo. I have never been so glad to wash my hair!!! 2 shampoos later I felt human again...



Scar is pretty neat and healing beautifully. I haven't had the guts to give it a good scrub yet, as suggested by the surgeon, but a few stitches are coming out round the sides. My surgeon was very pleased with it at the post-op review; he said the hair was very Mad Max! (alas no subtitled showings yet for Fury Road...) 
I am actually just about to have my hair tidied up and go for a proper undercut - when else will I ever get to do this?!

In other news, I have my switch-on date - 2nd of June! eeeeeek! Not really sure what to expect - except the unexpected! I'm trying to tell myself to relax and just go with the flow, and try not to freak out too much at whatever comes through the processor. I'm worried that I'm secretly expecting to be able to understand voices straight away and then will be disappointed and cry. 

I also have a sheaf of other tuning appointments which I should start putting in the diary actually. 

While I wait for switch-on, I am managing with just one hearing aid in my right ear - much better than I thought I would, but obviously I am pretty good at lipreading my family and closest friends. If I was back at work in A&E/ECU with just one ear I think I would really struggle. It's surprisingly hard to lateralise sound, and I have been finding it harder than usual in loud noisy environments. I've not yet been able to pluck up the courage to put my hearing aid back in my implanted ear - I think I would just freak out if there was no sound at all. (There probably won't be, as most cochlear implant ops destroy what residual hearing you have left. Granted, my residual hearing is pretty shit, but it took a long time for me to let go of it and take the plunge with the op.)

Time to pop to the hairdressers! ta ra darlinks. 

Cyborg

I've just got back from the wonderful James Cook University Hospital, where I had my cochlear implant yesterday morning. I thought I would write down exactly what I experienced so anyone else thinking of CIs has a benchmark experience to look at. (Apologies if it is a bit long and waffly, but I would have loved to know all the little details before the op. Also further apologies if it is too medical/not medical enough, I find the balance hard to strike! It was a very weird experience to find myself a patient again, especially now I've had 2.5 years working as a doctor "on the other side".)

We stayed with the wonderful Christine and Mav who were superlative hosts as usual. They and Matt cooked us the most derishus stirfry - I was v. greedy and had 2 helpings, knowing full well it would be my last meal for a little while. Didn't sleep too well as kept thinking about the next day! I also kept waking up and confusedly thinking it had been done and was all over - haha. Finally woke up at 6.30am. Tried to substitute breakfast with a long hot shower. Still hungry, I rocked up to the Female Surgical Admissions Unit at 7.30am (or a tiny bit later; we managed to get a bit lost as JCUH is humungous!) David sat with me until I was called through, then went off to walk the dog and get himself breakfast. I sat around being hungry until some nice nurses came and checked my ID and put wristbands on me, discussed my "allergy" of gluten and put a gluten allergy wristband on as well (which I found a bit ridiculous but better safe than sorry - as Christine said, I could have come round from my anaesthetic and started demanding gluten-y bacon butties!) I was then suited and booted in a suitably hideous hospital gown and TED stockings (to prevent any DVTs).

pre-op nerves!

The ENT registrar popped along to check I was there, and drew a "this way up" arrow on the left side of my neck, pointing at my left ear. The anaesthetist came along as well to do an anaesthetics clerking - as I've had a general anaesthetic before for my lymph node biopsy she didn't seem too worried about anything. Then my surgeon turned up to say hello and see if I had any questions - it was really good to see him as I was starting to get a bit nervous by this point! He was very nice and reassuring and I felt much better. 

I walked round to theatres - by this time it was nearly 9am - with one of the nurses and hopped on my trolley, lay back and commiserated with the anaesthetist about how rubbish my veins were post-chemo. She got access easy-peasy though and then - after one final identity check - a mask was popped on my face and they said, "You will start to feel light-headed now..." which I immediately did. I don't really remember much beyond that apart from a odd feeling of floating away....

I woke up in recovery at about 11am and honestly my first thought was, "oh shit what have I done?!" followed by "DOES MY FACE WORK??" I was rather paranoid about a facial nerve palsy despite this now being a very rare complication. Fortunately my face did work on both sides and I felt quite awake. I couldn't stop shaking which was v. annoying - this wore off after about 10 minutes. I was offered IV morphine but the pain really wasn't that bad, so I declined (for which I am now kicking myself, I could have been high as a kite!) I was rolled back to the ward where I had to lever myself off the trolley and onto the bed. As soon as I sat up I got this alarming blare of tinnitus in my left (newly implanted) ear, and felt very dizzy - fortunately the dizziness wore off quickly and I think it was just being woozy from the anaesthetic rather than any inner ear pathology. 

I also appeared to have been attacked by cannulas while asleep....

I immediately asked to have my phone plugged in and was on Whatsapp and Facebook straight away - thank God for the modern world! I spent a while poking my face and the ginormous bandage. (This was a pressure bandage which would be on for the next 24 hours, to reduce any swelling.)

My surgeon appeared later on at about 12 and said it had gone fantastically well, he was really pleased with how easily the electrodes had gone in. He then looked sheepish and said that his registrar had been over-enthusiastic with the head-shaving and I might be in for a shock when the bandage came off, so he felt he had to warn me! However having been entirely bald before I wasn't too bothered....I immediately went on Pinterest to pin Natalie Dorner style undercuts. Then I lay in bed dozing a bit and playing about with the bed controls. I had some codeine and Oramorph and then Christine appeared in her scrubs and got the nurses to make me some tea and gluten free toast - nomz nomz. I had a really sore left TMJ (jaw) at this point - not sure if it was the airway management or the surgeon leaning on my jaw? I shall have to ask him next week.

I had a little nap for an hour then the rest of the day passed in several cups of tea from the lovely nurses, and reading "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - v.g. 

flower! and also head bandage

Christine popped back at 5 to see me again and we had a good natter. She left when my gluten free shepherd's pie arrived - I managed to eat it without too much jaw pain, then read some more until David arrived. Christine and Mav returned with the most amazing curry which was far better than the hospital offerings. We all ate together and talked some more until they got kicked out at 9pm. My drip of teicoplanin and meropenem was started (second of three - is best evidence for antibiotic prophylaxis apparently.)


I brushed my teeth and tried to get my head down for some sleep but was starting to develop an alarming C6-8 parasthesia (pins and needles) in my arms - I worked out that it was the bandage pressing on my neck nerves and asked the nurse to loosen it which helped a bit. Had some codeine and got off to sleep OK, despite the ginormous bandage and cannula in my right arm! (I normally drop off to sleep on my left side but I doubt I'll be doing that for a little while!)

Was awoken at about 4.30am by nurse checking my obs - aiieeeee! - and couldn't get back to sleep after that, so I had some codeine and a cup of tea and some toast, followed by ibuprofen and paracetamol. And the third drip of antibiotics!

mathematical!

I sat about reading Adventure Time (thanks Matt!) all morning and drinking constant cups of tea, then went down to X ray for my skull X ray to check the implant was in the right place. This was then reviewed by my surgeon; he came to show me my new wiggly little wires in my head! SO COOL! The bandage was taken off and I asked for a mirror - at this point the surgeon looked like he might want to run away. However I was pleasantly surprised at how rad it looked - will be channelling a fierce look for the next few weeks! 

After that it was a matter of getting dressed, getting my stuff together and saying goodbye to the lovely nurses. I toddled out to where David was waiting and off we went home. 

A summary of my side effects:
1. A slightly numb left ear 
2. A feeling of fullness in my left ear - like a middle ear infection. Bit of pain and throbbing but nothing horrendous.
3. A fuzzy shaved bit of head oh yeaaaaah! Feels like a stubbly peach :D
4. Very short-lived tinnitus which only lasted a few hours post-op
5. A sore left TMJ - hurts to chew so I am taking small mouthfuls for a change
6. A fleeting feeling of nausea post-op in recovery
7. A persistent tachycardia of about 110 - probably a combination of pain, stress (from people telling me I was persistently tachycardic) and dehydration. Seems to have settled now. 
8. Bit of a sore neck and a tight feeling across my left scalp
9. Oh yes and I can wiggle my right ear but not my left any more! as this was one of my party tricks I hope it comes back....

No facial nerve palsies, no metallic taste, no numb lips or tongue, no taste disturbance, no dizziness or balance issues. Phew!

I go back next Thursday to have a post-op check - I can wash my hair on Wednesday WAHOO!
Going to go be lazy and watch Game of Thrones now. Laters!!