Surgery feels like a distant memory now. Seepage has reduced to next to nothing and I'm feeling fit. On Monday I went in to Charing Cross for another blood test. This was to get a base hormone level before recommencing pills. It's good to be back on them. A new chapter awaits...
7:30am and I'm back at Charing Cross again for surgery. The procedure, by Phil Thomas, is going to widen the entrance to my urethra and fix the granularities which have weeping consistently since SRS four months ago. At around 2:30 I am taken to the operating theatre.
I wake up quickly after the half hour procedure, a catheter in place. I don't accept any pain relief because I don't have any. I sleep for the rest of the day, only stirring when I realise that I need to start passing urine to get out of here. I drink about 4 litres of water overnight and feel ready to go in the morning.
Unfortunately the nursing staff have other ideas. Thomas wrote down '24 hours' for my catheter to stay in and hospital policy is to not remove them in the afternoon in case complications emerge that evening. I'm going stir crazy at this stage and feeling nervous about being healthy in hospital (it doesn't always last that way). The fact that there is a nurse from the hospital with TB in the bed two down from me does little to ease my mind.
James Bellringer pops by to tell me that the operation went well and that I shouldn't have any problems from here on. I convince him to let me out of the ward on the grounds that I'm "sensible". It works and I'm home free.
The trip home on the tube is torturous. Having drunk bucketloads of water, I need to go to the toilet every five minutes and get caught in between stops. I barely make it home before wetting myself.
The difference before and after this surgery is immense. The oozing dirty yellow liquid has cleared up overnight, and I can clear my bladder almost instantly. There is a slight raw sensation each time I finish peeing, as if some internal surface is exposed to the air.