Home Sweet Home...

As you can see from the typo in yesterday's post title, I couldn't see straight due to the very effective painkillers I'd been given...

I'd just like to thank everyone for their prayers and best wishes: having a spinal anaesthetic was, quite literally, the answer to my prayers (not all anaesthetists seem too keen on them.)

Spinal anaesthesia feels pretty weird. First of all, I couldn't feel anything from the waist down. I couldn't move anything. I couldn't even feel myself trying to move anything. When I put my hand on my leg, my hand felt warm skin, but there was no leg detecting the hand, so it felt as if I was touching someone else's leg... but my brain did a sort of back-flip, because I knew it was my own leg. I also got a bit of a shock when I saw a leg being moved by a nurse, and then realised that it was my leg.

The major advantage of a spinal anaesthetic is that the immediate post-operative pain is pretty much over by the time you can feel anything at all, and sensation returns very gradually, so medication for pain relief is therefore pretty effective. In my experience, waking up from general anaesthesia has always involved a much more immediate awareness of pain... more often than not, it was the pain which brought me round, and the painkillers have a higher threshold to get over. Patient-controlled analgesia pumps work on much the same sort of principle: little doses of painkiller, administered very frequently, prevent the pain building up, and so less painkiller is needed overall.

I'm now safely back home, having unpacked my bag, cuddled the cat and wolfed down some hot, buttered toast. Normal blogging will resume shortly...