"Surgery"

I went in for day surgery and ended up mutilated, infected, unaware of any/all of my treatment, ignored, belittled, and dismissed for five weeks. Now back at my regional home town (with a major regional hospital) my notes are not easily accessible, my doctors are talked down to, my medical team is ignored and belittled, and noted to be incompetent in small comments. My appointments are not accurate, my only contact with the FSH Plastics team is through a wound care nurse that is always late, rushed, and dismissive.

What have I had at FSH: i have had nurses argue with me about my pain relief (arranged by your own pain team), doctors have a consult with me while I slept, my drip line dropped on the floor and reconnected to my cannula after blood taking with no flush and no aseptic techniques. I have had nurses argue over removing a dressing when I informed them it wasn’t right only to have raging cellulitis underneath. I have had blood taken for a cross match by a surgeon with a syringe that they then carried out of the room (full of blood) to put into the tube and label (who knows if that was my blood cross matched but I did check the unit I received was my blood group). I have had surgeons recall a study done once that debunks the lymphoedema myth, in patients with a full lymph node clearance from a mastectomy, to dismiss my permissions and cannulate on my breast cancer side. I have been screamed at by a ward coordinator that Ward 4B does not do negative feedbaack. I have been left for a week post surgery with no shower, no bed change and sitting in my own blood and bodily fluids. I have had 2 cannulas a day for >12 days and a PICC finally done 14 days after signing the consent because, and I recall, they are too busy, the day before I was kicked out and transferred to my ‘little tin shed’ regional hospital. I have watched pus and blood ooze down my leg after three days of my Nurse asking for a dressing removal and wound review, Emily and Steph of ward 6A - you probably saved my leg, thank you for fighting for me.

What I haven’t had at FSH: any opportunity [as a single parent who works full time who was coming into school holidays] to plan or prepare for an extended hospital stay 500kms from home, an explanation of the procedure and recovery for a full understanding prior to signing the consent, an explanation of the expected recovery time from my surgery, explanation of my surgery, discussions with the surgeons around my care, food that has any flavour, a social worker and psychiatric support (not from lack of asking or meeting criteria). Respect. Understanding. Belief. Any autonomy in decisions around my healthcare and various treatments. A denture cup.

What has FSH given me: a mutilated and non functional leg with no real in-depth discussions, explanations or justification as to why this is an improvement or that I was going to walk in but not walk out. A bigger and deeper wound (that may or may not be healing) than I started with in the exact same spot as the last one, further injury and damage to non affected areas of my leg, Unmanaged pain, increased stress, the undoing of years of cPTSD therapy. Ive nearly lost my job after being off work for [now] 6 weeks when I only just started in July. Financial stress due to no leave available from work, and I missed my child’s birthday.

I feel like the absolute least important person in the world who should be grateful for what I feel is the slap happy, half arsed attempt at healthcare I do receive. I am a metastatic breast cancer patient, this is my life and I just feel like a total inconvenience and should apologise for interrupting your big, interesting surgical cases.

The only one fighting for me is me, I can’t fight cancer and a seemingly disinterested medical team …..