20. The Procedure

If it's a sunny Saturday in September, it must be an emergency endoscopy!

I am lying on my side, retching and burping while two nurses are holding my head still and stroking my hair, and thinking, if this goes on much longer I think I’m going to die.

I should be glad-ragged at a golden, faerie “society wedding” in the Cotswolds on this glorious sunny Saturday. Instead I’m in Chelsea and Westminster hospital with a tube deep inside my stomach.

The nurses are saying, “just breathe my darling, concentrate on your breathing.” They told me afterwards my blood pressure had see-sawed from very low to sky-high during the short procedure, and I’m not surprised. I like to think I’m pretty tough but I’m struggling. My eyes shut, chest heaving, I’m gagging and drooling, with a tube down my throat as biopsies are methodically taken with tiny forceps from my oesophagus, snip, snip, feeling like a sharp pinch each time.

Before the procedure I’d been offered a menu when it came to pain relief: general anaesthetic, sedation, or a throat spray. As I considered the options (Ivo had said, “don’t even THINK about not having the sedation! I didn’t have it, and I had to interrupt my colonoscopy HALF WAY THROUGH I was in such pain!) this was on my mind.

I’d had a bad experience with some gummies at Abba Voyage only a few days before. My fault entirely, I thought they’d enhance my birthday treat so I sent Ivo out to source some. Now, my husband is a bit like Withnail, he can take anything, he can take double anyone else, but I am a lightweight and they left me anxious and depressed and paralysed with Weltschmerz, and remembering why I hate all forms of psychotropic recreation.

It was so bad that I woke up the next day moaning, “Peter Hitchens is right, Peter Hitchens is right” (one of Hitchens’ abiding obsessions in his Mail column and other platforms is the dangers of so-called soft drugs) which gives you some idea.

I didn’t want to major on drugs twice in one week so a general anaesthetic was out (and not really on the table, this was a Saturday and there was a skeleton staff at the 2nd floor treatment centre at C&W).

Sedation was out as I’d already been waiting for three hours (“why didn’t you take a book?” my husband asked pointedly later) as they don’t let you leave for another hour if you have sedation. So I opted for throat spray.

“Open wide,” the nurse said, and spritzed the back of my throat and I swallowed some bitter liquid. “And again.”

Then I lay on my left side (I didn’t have to put on “dignity shorts” which was a relief) and had to put my chin close to my chest. They inserted a large mouth guard for me to bite on so I didn’t spit out the long tube equipped with mini camera and tiny forceps (I didn’t dare look at it, so I am guessing here).

“How long do you think this takes?” the consultant asked genially. He’d done probably a score of endoscopies and colonoscopies back to back today, both ends of the alimentary canal. He was a reassuring, elflike Welshman with an even more reassuring RP voice. “Only three minutes!”

He spoke with childlike wonder, as if he himself couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

All I can say is, three minutes feels like three hours. It’s like an alien invasion of your body. Imagine something firm entering your throat (look, this is no time for jokes) and going down, down, down and then inflating your stomach while every fibre of your being wants to expel the intruder. I tried to think of the poor children of Gaza being operated on without any analgesia at all, but I’m afraid nothing really helped apart from the sweet nurses, telling me my terrible burping and reflux was “normal.”

I tried to think of how lucky I was to have got this appointment at all, within a fortnight of complaining to my GP that when I had a “heavy meal” it didn’t feel as if the food moved down through my digestive tract, instead sat as a bolus above my ribcage. My GP, Dr Topham, asked me more questions: had this been going on a long time? (Yes, since February). And had I experienced any bloating? (Yes!)

No wonder I was fast-tracked: all my symptoms correlated to “suspected stomach cancer” as a follow-up letter on my NHS app told me a few days later. Like millions of others, I had entered the so-called “care pathway.”

After less than five minutes, the terrible tube had been reversed out of my cavities. My throat was sore and I felt sorry for myself, but the joy, after being NBM (nil by mouth) for 18 hours, I was allowed to have a few sips of water. Within ten minutes of the endoscopy, I was handed a written report and a copy for my GP, typed out and signed by my marvellous consultant surgeon, a Mr Meyrick-Thomas.

“Cancer not found, no further investigations required – pathway stopped,” the letter ended, and that’s the point here.

If something doesn’t feel right, go to your GP. It’s that simple.

Instead of being have been hosed with Champagne at a society wedding, I was hosed by an expert with an endoscope. I couldn’t be more grateful, even if a tiny part of me worries that as nothing was in the end amiss - my stomach was normal - I was wasting valuable resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.

I was deeply impressed by the rapid treatment I got, by the brilliance of the NHS app, by the tender, skilled and courteous care before, during and after the procedure which is – as above – not for the fainthearted (but at least it was as quick as advertised).

That was my Saturday afternoon, yesterday, in and on the NHS. Bloody amazing, even though I will be very wary of the word “uncomfortable” if attached to any kind of procedure again, or “discomfort.”

I know what those words mean now. They mean TAKE THE SEDATION!

Anyway I can’t think of how else to thank all the nurses and doctors who treated me so well, so I wrote this.

PS since posting one of the commenters, who describes herself as a retired NHS professional, has suggested I write to the Chief Executive of the NHS Chelsea and Westminster Foundation NHS Trust, which I have just this moment done. Thank you for the suggestion.