Eh? So you'll go through an operation and all it entails and be scarred?
There are probably very good reasons for surgery but I'd expect more of an explanation than: 'we just do it.'
I was an avid reader of the My Operation feature in Take A Break because it was inadvertently funny and I'm like that.
Then there came one that pulled me up short because it was so fucking tragic.
The feature was written in a fake colloquial, dropped-intro way where you couldn't work out what was going on. It was also squeamish and coy.
The 60-something woman had vulval cancer and had to have 'an operation'.
That's how she described it. I've no doubt it was unavoidable and was a very serious situation. But no effort was made to explain the procedure or its consequences. I'm guessing the surgeon was one of those people who view patients as procedures to be got through on the list.
She had it done and after a few days on a catheter was taken to the loo by a nurse.
She wrote: 'I reached down to wipe and all my fluffy bits were gone.'
She wept. I'm not surprised.
I laughed out of shock at first and then thought how awful that would be.
What she was describing was the radical removal of all her external genitals and a good part of her vagina. Major disfigurement with nullification of sexual pleasure and possible implications for urinary continence.
All entirely necessary, no doubt, but you'd think the surgeon could have explained it to her and perhaps assigned someone else to talk it over in more detail
Luckily the nurse who helped her to the loo was on hand to dry her eyes.
Perhaps the most poignant part was when she explained to her husband, who was also in the dark, and he said: 'Cheer up, love. You're still here and it's not like we use those bits much any more these days.'
No, and that's the main thing and I hope she's still alive.
But the person lopping those bits off could have taken time to explain. It wouldn't have taken even half as much time as the actual procedure.