Operation Overkill

"Operation overkill" is nothing to do with inner city knife crime and everything to do with how we are feeling.

According to Mr Christmas, Quent has a tear in the muscle leading to the floating rib. He thinks this was almost certainly done during the recent lung operation.

What it needs is another operation (complete with General Anaesthetic) to tie the ribs back together. (Multi reef knots for the Scouts amongst you.) And then six weeks' recovery, with no sport, lifting etc. The date is fixed for Friday 3rd October.

The run up to Christmas

We have joined the retail trade. It is September and we are getting ready for Christmas....

Last week, Quent was in quite a bit of pain and seemed to have a bone protruding from his old nephrectomy scar - from 2006. We wondered if the floating rib they had to cut when removing the kidney had, well, floated.



He's still in quite a bit of discomfort and finds it hard to sleep at night. I emailed Mr Jones (lung surgeon) to see if he'd maybe had to cut something which could account for it, but his reply was definitely "Not me, Gov". I copied the fabulous Dr Savage, who has spoken to Mr Christmas (who took the kidney out). Mr Christmas wants to see Quent on Monday morning.

According to a medical friend of mine, it is most likely to be a hernia, which is "a protusion of a tissue, structure, or part of an organ through the muscular tissue or the membrane by which it is normally contained". The usual treatment is an operation and several weeks' recovery.

Other than this, Quent seems to be doing well. Another medical friend of ours brought her "stitch picker" home and removed a stitch that had been left in one of his recent scars. These are now all healing very nicely. As ever, we are indebted to the Doctors who agree to be our friends in spite of the "off duty" work it seems to entail. And to the Doctors at Charing Cross who aren't even in our social circles but still go beyond the call of duty for us.

We are looking forward to seeing Father Christmas. It's been nearly two years.