Taking a LEEP of faith

Things have been a little slack around these parts of late, but maybe it’s just the case that I’ve been saving all my energy for my best ever yet blog posting (and of course waiting for the grand unveiling of my sparkly new design).

I guess I’ll have to let you be the judge of that.

So then, quick re-cap. Steve flies to Australia for just over 2 weeks this afternoon. Last night I headed over to his for a fancy night out at our favourite restaurant, Chez Bruce, but the day’s events had taken their toll.

Yesterday morning I was busily typing away at my desk when my mobile phone started singing to me. It was not, for a change, one of the many repeated mistake calls from Dan, but an intriguing ‘unknown’ number. A posh voice asked me to confirm my name and then he introduced himself as my consultant, Dr Disney (this name has not been changed for comedic effect, it really is his name). We spoke about my results and he told me that he wanted me to come in for some treatment and that this treatment would be LEEP- currently the most common for cervical changes of the sort I have, CIN 3, or cervical cancer stage 0 if you will (so barely even begun).

LEEP involves passing an electrically charged loop over the lesion and effectively cutting it clean from inside you. It takes place under a local anaesthetic. This piece of skin is then used diagnostically to check to see if the cells have got any worse or whether they are happy they got all the nastiness. LEEP is 85-90% effective and can be repeated once if it’s not. After that you’ll be pretty much void of any cervix, so if you fell pregnant you’d need to have a C section. And if that doesn’t work then its hysterectomy time, partial or total, depending on your situation. But on the bright side, that’s a 90% chance I’m going to be absolutely fine.

Being Ali and being hyper neurotic, I of course had to research every dubious and ill-formed article and US chatroom and I sat and read whilst my heart sank and I felt gradually more nauseous. Talk of miscarriages, infertility, horror stories about the agony of the treatment etc etc. At this point I started to think that perhaps I ought to have insisted on having a general anaesthetic.

I left work feeling wobbly and probably even a little bit wibbly and headed to Steve’s pondering on my way whether this treatment would provoke a similar response as the last, i.e fainting and seizure. I literally turned the corner of the street saw out of the corner of my eye a red flash and realised that there was a girl lying on the floor, frothing at the mouth and have an epileptic seizure. Irony of ironies. If there is a god, I don’t know if this was a warning, or a ‘stop being so f*king self indulgent you pathetic cow!’.

Being first at the scene I went into my now fairly finely honed ER routine (don’t want to make myself sound like a freak but this is the 3rd time this year I’ve been the first at the scene of an accident and had to call 999, I swear they are a friends and family number). I phoned the ambulance, I checked her pulse, I held her head as still as I could but didn’t restrict her fitting, I checked her heart beat and I did other very important things like stroking her hair and her hands softly in case somehow she could feel reassured by my presence. I knew from the research that I had done after my recent fit that people aren’t at risk from tongue swallowing, so I didn’t force her into the recovery position. I even checked her wallet for her name and kept saying her name over and over, ‘Philippa’ ‘Philippa’ as she lapsed in and out of consciousness, glassy eyed and fixed pupils.

Ambulance arrived in no more than 5 minutes time, by which point Philippa had quite a little crowd and had come too enough to tell me she suffered from epilepsy and had frequent seizures. In a verging no out of body experience, I told the ambulance driver, ‘This is Philippa, she suffers from epilepsy. She has had a seizure lasting 2-3 minutes with full body shaking and foaming at the mouth. She had fixed unresponsive pupils for at least 2 minutes after the seizure ended’. It was at that point I realised that I watch far too much bad hospital drama.

I saw her into the ambulance, wished her luck and went on my way, feeling more than slightly freaked out.

3 hours at home, pondering over the day and waiting for Steve to get back from work so we could go out for dinner. Waiting, waiting, worrying, pacing, waiting. Worrying, waiting. Steve gets home and I’ve managed to work myself up into such a pickle that he gives me a big hug and tells me everything will be fine and I can feel myself go all stiff inside. I’m angry, but I’m not sure why. I suppose I’m angry that this is all still dragging on and I can’t see an end in sight. I’m angry that he’s leaving for Australia tomorrow and I’m going to be left pondering this horrible treatment on my own. I’m angry that our lovely evening has been spoilt because I’m feeling too upset and wobbly to enjoy a fancy dinner, and I’m refusing point blank to just say those simple words. I’m terrified.

After several attempts at cuddles, reassuring words and eye contact Steve picks up the phone, calls the restaurant and cancels the booking whilst squeezing my hand firmly. My resolve crumbles and I start to have a damn good cry and it all floods out. I feel like if someone put a little camera inside me what they would see if something black, rotten and mouldy and worst of all, dead. I am scared that if things don’t go to plan, we might never get to have children together. I ask him how he’d feel if I couldn’t have his children. He tells me that we’d just get lots of dogs instead and I cry harder. He tells me I’m being silly (of course!) and not to assume the worst. This treatment will work and in 6 months I’ll be fine. I fall asleep in a snotty mess and when I wake up, Steve’s just coming home from Tescos with a big bunch of lovely flowers and all the ingredients for spaghetti bolognaise. He pours me a glass of white wine, gets me one of his cosy hoodies and sits me down whilst he cooks, yawning quietly all the while.

We eat and sit in silence and then we hold hands tightly.

And all the fanciest things in the world could never match the calm feeling I get sitting with my Steve in quiet contemplation.

It’ll be ok.