On 29th June I travelled with my husband to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinsted to meet with a consultant plastic surgeon. The journey takes about an hour. It is a specialist hospital (mainly reconstructive, plastic surgery, burns, head and hand specialists from what I can gather) and I was very shocked at how it looked - it appeared consist of a series of huts, requiring you to go outside in order to walk from one ward or department to another. It may not look impressive, but within a minute of arriving it was very clear that this was a hospital where the staff are incredibly friendly and helpful, and it seems to feel much more laid back and less hurried than my local general hospital. The receptionist on the front desk acted more like a hotel receptionist than a medical one - big welcoming smiles and all the time in the world to help us find where we were going. In fact, you never got the feeling that you were bothering or holding up any of the staff, the receptionist in the outpatients dept chatted away to patients like old friends and everyone working there just seemed happier than at a normal hospital.
Nevertheless, I was expecting to be fobbed off. When I saw the plastic surgeon I was all full of everything I wanted to say, all the points I needed to make - essentially ready for a ruck! I was totally flabbergasted when he looked at my axilla and was just totally self-assured and matter of fact (he had the air of someone who knew all about it - a shock in itself). There was no hesitation he stated that "well all that clearly needs to come out" and muttered about "what have they been playing at?" and "what's the point in medications that don't work?" - finally, finally someone who had not only treated it before but was more interested in actually trying to solve the problem than giving me pills and hoping I'd shut up. He felt that because of the tracking (sinus tracts) in the area the only sensible course of action is to remove the skin, including sweat glands.
I was then expecting there to be a 3 - 6 month wait for the op - and was totally shocked to discover it would be in less than 3 weeks!! Everything then happened very quickly (the Queen Victoria, I discovered, is a very efficient hospital) I went from not even knowing if I would be offered surgery to having all my pre admission obs, tests and interviews done in the space of 2 hours!! This was fantastic, of course, the only drawback being that I hadn't had time to get my head around the fact that I was actually going to have this fairly major operation, so I didn't really know what questions to ask.
It was a surreal experience - even the nurses taking my blood pressure knew all about HS. It really was as if I'd fought through a fog and found an oasis in the middle of it where everyone understood me.
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