A (yellow) Bear in Borneo

[ebianca]

And a dam fine one she would have made too!

[MotherBear]

Thanks Beth. It's all down to 'kind' lighting on the photo. I think I would come under the Senior Citizens' Podgey Section. Just realised the lighting on that isn't very good, so you can't really see how well all the wounds have healed up. You can just about make out the one remaining dressing over on my right side. You can see it better on this other pic. There's just a small black line (blood I assume) remaining under my left lesser-spotted boobie. Considering what a mess my front was in, it's healed fabulously well. It's all this good, clean living I'm doing and, of course, his great skill as a brilliant surgeon would have something to do with it .

I hope you'll all be spared any further bikini shots unless anything dramatic happens after I have my T tube out in a few weeks. And, of course, I still have to have treatment to remove the brown owl from the top of my head .

[Taffy]

OMG you still have that wooly owl hanging thingy!! Ahh childhood memories

[MotherBear]

We bought that when we were on holiday at Butlins, Minehead and that must have been nearly 30 years ago. Some things endure. I guess it'll come back into fashion one day if I hang it up for long enough.

[selchie]

Thanks for the details on gallbladder fun & games, MB. I'll pass it on.

I'm glad to see you're healing up well.

[MotherBear]

Finally got to watch the DVD of the op last night. Jeez, I was exhausted afterwards. What a struggle he had to cut and get the gallbladder out. We could see it bursting open (or maybe he cut it deliberately) and the stones were popping out, looking like green boulders. I have to say the area looked like there'd been a gruesome massacre as he used a burning tool to separate the gb from the liver. I bet it smelled like a BBQ in the operating theatre. We could see the smoke rising and also, sometimes, flames where he was burning through me. My poor, poor liver . What a mess it looked at the end, but I assume it will recover. Somehow, liver and onions doesn't have the same appeal anymore .

So much equipment coming into play, crocodile grabber, another kind of tool for grabbing, burning tool, camera, cutters, suction and washing tool, tubing, packing material, needle and 'thread' and, of all things, a nylon basket to collect all the debris at the end. He'd packed it so full he couldn't pull it out through the hole, which may have been my belly button. We even saw the T tube going in (reluctantly, as it kept popping out). That bit worried me because it's still inside me and needs to come out in a few weeks. The needlework that stitched the tube in place and repaired the bile duct was 'interesting'. Don't think he'd have scored many points for neatness. Still can't figure out how he's going to remove the tube, but I'll leave it to him to worry about.

At some stages it looked like there was scaffolding in there because of the amount of metal tools on the go. One shot looked like someone had left a few nails lying around, but I guess not . The pushing and pulling, burning and cutting he did, I truly can't understand how I'm up, walking around and feeling pretty good. I had to keep reminding myself it was me it was happening to. I have to applaud the people that do this kind of surgery as recovery is so much quicker and less painful. I could feel the doc's confusion as he tried to figure out the best way to go about sorting the mess out. The film went quiet a few times and perhaps this was him taking a break as I'm sure he needed it.

I would stress that this was a particularly difficult gb op (I can never do anything straight forward ). Anyone reading this who may be facing such an op will no doubt fly through it without a problem, so they don't need to worry. It should only have taken 20 mins. but took 3 and half hours, so that tells you it wasn't a normal run-of-the-mill op.

I'd post up the video in case anyone is interested, but not sure how to go about it. I'll have to scout around and investigate.

[nickydwuk]

I would love to see it - out of professional curiosity of course

[MotherBear]

I checked on my Photobucket site and it only seems to give me 5 min. shots. Considering the DVD is 2 hr 40 mins. long that's a hell of a lot of 5 min. films (he only started filming after I'd been prepped and the camera was inside me and stopped the camera after it had been withdrawn from my body). Has anyone got any suggestions how I could make such a long film available on the Internet? I doubt YouTube would be any good because they are only short films, too, and the screen would be too small to see all the detail.

Nicky, it really was fascinating although a bit slow in some places where he must have been pondering his next move because he's just continually pulling and pushing at my gb and ducting rather than getting on with the job in hand. I find it amazing that what appeared to be so much 'brutality' could be inflicted on the organs of the human body, yet the amount of pain I felt afterward didn't reflect this. Watching pointed hollow metal tubes burst through into my inner cavities (and that was just for openers ) and the absolute gore when he was trying to burn the gb away from the liver reminded me of a horror movie. There was so much mess we couldn't figure out how he could see what he was doing. Another large organ (maybe my lung or my stomach) was trying to get into the act and had to be repeatedly pushed out of the way. Obviously trying for a starring role in the film.

Although I really would rather not have gone through all this, I do feel privileged to have been given the chance to see just what went on inside me. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or at least I certainly hope it's only once .

[Taffy]

There's not many places you can upload that length of video without being charged! If I put it on the forum it would have to be pay-per-view to cope with the bandwidth charges

[MotherBear]

I suspected as much. The best I could do if anyone was really interested in seeing the intricate workings of (a very difficult) keyhole surgery (and the intricate internal workings of a Bear) would be to copy the DVD and send it out to whoever wanted it and they could send it on to the next person. I'd have to write out an accompanying description of what's going on as there is no commentary (which is understandable as I'm sure there was a lot of swearing going on as it becomes ever more obvious that things aren't quite going to plan).

If there's anyone out there who isn't already bored to death of my op , perhaps they could register interest on here so I know whether it's worthwhile copying the DVD. For some reason the DVD we had copied from the original video tape didn't work on either my PC or hubster's laptop but did work on his work laptop so he copied it onto a hard drive and then put it our our machines. I would hope it would work on someone else's PC.