This time last year, I definitely wasn’t expecting to have had a major operation and be home resting with my leg in a brace for another 3 weeks. But I’m getting ahead of myself so I’ll backtrack and provide some background.

Last year – 2019 – we had been on holiday in Germany and Holland, doing a lot of walking and sightseeing, which was all fine. Around this time I had noticed a bump on my left leg that looked a bit odd but thought nothing too much of it.

Since coming back from that holiday and around September time, I believe I may have knocked my leg or bruised it somehow — this combined with the treadmill running I was doing at the time — led me to believe that I had done some kind of sports injury. We had a city break then booked for Paris for a weekend, and my leg was really sore. We did a lot of walking in a short space of time and at this point the pain was quite unbearable. I had to rest and it kinda spoilt the trip a little.

When we got back from the trip I called the GP and booked in an appointment. They weren’t quite sure what the bump was either so told me to go to Northampton hospital for an X-RAY. Never having broken a bone this was all quite new to me! Following the X-RAY I received a letter asking me to book a referral appointment at the hospital to see a consultant, but the earliest appointment I could get was 2 months – taking us to December ’19.

The time came about for this appointment and I had a chat with the consultant. The first thing they wanted me to do was have another X-RAY, as it had been a while since the first one. Following this they checked and could see that there was an area that looked a little odd but still weren’t quite sure what it was. It wasn’t a fracture of any sort which is what I’d hoped it may have been (stress fracture). Following this my memory gets a little hazy, but went for CT, MRI, blood tests etc. and finally went back on the 23rd December, to be told they think it’s osteosarcoma aka bone cancer. At this point the consultants at Northampton had already been in contact with various folks at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital at Stanmore, London. I was referred for a biopsy on New Year’s Eve straight away. This is where they take a bit of bone or tissue to try and determine what’s going on. First biopsy came back inconclusive, so I went for another later in January 2020. This also came back inconclusive. I then went to a clinic session at another hospital site in central London where I met with the consultant surgeon who gave me the news that they weren’t 100% sure what the cancer was but they had moved things up a notch and had me on a waiting list for an operation to remove the tumour from the bone, plate it up and replace my knee in the process due to the proximity of the tumour and them wanting to cut more out to be safe….

This brings us to 11th Feburary when I was admited to the RNOH for what would be 2 weeks. An operation on the 12th had been canceled and they wanted me in right away. The two biopsies I had had were under general anesthetic so I was used to that by now but I was still very anxious. They had estimated the operation would take around 5 hours. That’s 5 hours under relying on aneathestic and breathing apperatus to keep me going. LIke I said before, I’d never broken a bone in my body so going in for an operation like this was a little nerve wracking. A lot could go wrong but I was in good hands with some of the hospital’s top surgeons.

Long story short (as I didn’t really know what was going on during the operation) but 7 hours later (yep.. things took a little longer) I woke up in the recovery ward next to the theatre, with some very nice nurses looking after me. I had drips in left right and centre. I was nil by mouth pre operation so they were pumping me with all sorts of fluid to help hydrate me as well as pain relief. Pain wise, I felt okay. My leg was in a cast and back slab so I couldn’t move anything. I had a drain in at the op site to drain out fluid from my leg – grim – I was on glucose and some other hydrating fluid, and also on a morphine pump and lots of other goodies. I also had a catheter in as they wanted to measure fluid input/output. The plus side is that they didn’t need to do a skin graft which would have potentially increased the time I would be in hospital, and I didn’t need a blood transfusion. Throughout the whole op I only lost 700mls of blood. You lose this giving blood!

The following few days were uncomfortable and I was on a cocktail of painkillers on top of morphine that I could administer myself and oxygen because of the morphine. The first night post operation they were coming to check on me ever 2hrs and taking blood pressure and temperature and blood oxygen levels. Pretty quickly though things started to be removed, the drain from my leg was removed after a couple of days (had drained over a pint of fluid) and they were pretty keen to get me off the morphine. Interestingly, the physios wanted me up out of bed and transferring to a chair and back after a few days, and it wasn’t long before the other lines were removed from my arms. The catheter was then removed and I was having to pee in bottles in bed. A first for me, but after doing it a couple of times I got used to that. Because of all the pretty heavy hitting drugs, my whole bowel movements had seized up so they were giving me tablets on top to make me go… that was quite traumatizing but it was coming up for 10 days not doing a number 2! Needless to say I felt much better when I went 🙂

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I wouldn’t recommend a hospital stay for R&R. Even though I stayed only two weeks, you get very insititutionalised. The obs changed to every few hours, but the obs at 6 realy got me… why wake you so earIy? I got really down on some days. Luckily I had my own room but it took a while to realise that actually a lot of the bad stuff was now in the past. The operation so far was a success, and everything seemed okay. I had another X-RAY a few days post op to make sure they had all the metal work in the right place and it was set. I’m now at home resting, with another 3 weeks having to keep my leg in a brace. After this time I can review with the constulants again and if they are happy with progress I can hopefully start more physio and bending of the knee. At this stage they can hopefully advise whether they got all the tumour out too or if I need follow up treatment.

This has been a really long post, so apologies. I guess the gist from this is that you know your body best… If something looks or feels odd go and see your GP. If something hurts for longer than it should go and get it checked out! The whole process up until know has been less than 6 months. At this point I don’t know how long the tumour was there for, but the good news is that it’s no longer there.