When I mentioned the a few months back on Instagram that I’d been to have my stitches check I got a few questions about what I’d had done so I thought I’d share my rollercoaster of a journey with you… Don’t scroll down if you’re squeamish; there’re a few photos of my stitches!
Basically, I had to have a lump removed from the side of my knee, it was nothing serious, yet was best to get it taken out as it had grown and changed colour.
At the end of November, after a few appointments with my doctor and the hospital, it was time to go under the knife…
How’s that for a #NoMakeUpSelfie?!
After 5 hours of waiting, I was actually pretty eager to get this over and done with. Poor Mumma Bear had been sitting and waiting for me the whole time!
Once I had been taken into the theatre, I was kept calm, given anaesthetic, and had my lump removed. Nothing complicated there as it was only about a 15-minute procedure and I was soon wheeled back up to where Mum was waiting. I felt fine and by this point I was quite eager to head home to the chap and my dad!
When the nurse came to check on my leg I noticed how much I’d bled and had to be seated as I thought I was going to pass out! Typical me, I’m useless with blood so I have no idea why looking was a good idea! After some chocolate, lots of water (as I wasn’t allowed to drink prior to my op and it was gone 5 pm!) I was back on my feet, out of my fetching gown, fully dressed and back home!
I worked from home the next day, and lovingly sent this SnapChat to a few friends to gross them out! As you can see it was very bloody but I wasn’t to clean the wound until the following day, and that wasn’t something I was looking forward to! The poor chap would have to be dragged in to help with that one!
So there we have the lovely wound on day three, sorry for the gross picture, I wanted to keep you all fully updated!
We cleaned this up and was all ready to have the stitches removed two weeks later.
This is where is all started to go wrong!
I headed to my local surgery where the nurse merely snipped off the top of the stitches and covered the wound over. When I removed the plaster 2 days later I was faced with this…
Yes, you see those blue marks, they are the stitches that were meant to have come out, but the nurse had kindly left in my leg without telling me! I was livid, and called the chap in to see, he agreed that that wasn’t right, so I then called my parents to alert them! The next morning I headed over to see my mum and get some advice on what to do as we were 95% sure they weren’t meant to be there! Luckily a close family friend is a nurse and when we explained what had happened she assured us this colour stitch wasn’t meant to be left in!!
As I didn’t want to have any more time off work, and my doctors surgery having no available appointments I had to attend our local walk-in clinic which turned me away from being too busy. I was then only left with one option, more time off work and an out of hours appointment with a different nurse to get the remaining stitches out.
Leaving work early to find a shocked nurse as to the state of the stitches that had been left in my leg, she did her very best to remove what should have been removed over a week ago. She managed to get two of the four out without too much pain, and I was advised to head to my local A&E to have the others removed.
Luckily I had the following day off work as I was going on holiday the next day and wanted some time to pack and not rush around, little did I know I would be spending this day off at Queen’s Hospital!
I have to say the wait was ‘painless’, I was seen within half an hour of turning up, and was home within an hour of turning up, but I did leave with stitches still in my leg. Due to the first nurse covering them over, and my local surgery not having any appointments the stitches had become embedded into my scar tissue and will come out if my body decides to push them out itself.
So three months later, you can still see the two remaining blue stitches in the scarring on my leg! I guess it’s a story to tell the grandkids, but I am hugely disappointed that one nurse can do such a bad job of, what I thought would be a very simple job! A nurse should be able to remove stitches with her eye closed, and certainly shouldn’t be covering over those that she left in my leg to hide them.
I personally think the NHS do an incredible job, so this is in no way a pop at them, I’m just saddened that one nurse has done damage to my leg, and wanted to update those that questioned how I was doing online!
Have you had any lumps removed?
2 responses to “My Lump Removal Journey”
I'm Squibb Vicious, better known as Haydy!
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Eek, sounds nasty! How frustrating that the first nurse left them in and that they’re stuck there for now, but like you said, a good story at least!
I’ve got a quick (slightly odd!) question – do you know what kind of lump it was in your leg and how big?? Just I’ve got one at the top of my outer thigh which I saw my GP about and he said it was nothing to worry about, and when I asked about getting it removed, he said they wouldn’t do it because it was technically cosmetic surgery. It’s quite annoying as the area around it is numb but I get like “electric shock” feelings around it quite a bit (not so much that it’s painful, but it’s a bit weird), and it’s a darker colour so is quite obvious – I just wondered if yours was similar to that?
Heya,
It was a ‘fibroma’ of some kind. I can’t remember the full name!
It looked like a light coloured mole to start with, probably 1cm in size and it got darker and grew a fair bit!
Mine was sore all the time as trousers would rub and with the colour change that’s what worried them.
Maybe keep an eye out for any changes?
Hx