I have had 4 ops on my kidneys (fun fun!) this summer. At least one of which went pretty seriously wrong. However, what was most stressful about the whole experience was that there are some odd but perfectly normal (iyswim) symptoms after these surgeries which no one warned me about but which could be made very clear on a simple aftercare handout.
Like, after one, you have the whole catheter and weeing blood experience - then it all heals up like you'd expect - but then about 2-3 weeks after healing you start weeing copious amounts of blood again. This is actually perfectly normal and to be expected, but no one specifically said this would happen and as you can imagine it massively freaked me out, cued panicked phone calls and GPs' appts, etc.
Another one is that after a different surgery, it's normal for a time to get increasing dull pain in the kidney. Now, obviously, you think something is wrong - actually, it isn't - but again, no one explained and I spent about 2 months up to going to see the consultant in his clinic convinced that I was going to lose the kidney.
Other things include the fact that no definite aftercare instructions were given - the nurse and consultant told me different things about showering, no one wrote down when I could drive again or go back to work, etc, so I just kind of guessed about those things.
It seems to me SO basic and obvious that you would just have a single side of A4 to give to people after this kind of op with stuff like 'here are some normal symptoms, don't worry if you have them' and 'don't drive for 4 weeks' or whatever.
WIBU to suggest this directly to the consultant? Or is he likely to think I am trying to tell him how to do his job or do I come over as a total hypochondriac stresshead?