Facts, that's all for now.

In October I had a second laparoscopy, and on Friday I went to see my consultant about what he found and what would happen next, so here it is.

(Warning: on Saturday night, when talking to Tina about this, her husband Matt sort of gagged a little bit and walked off and I realised that not everyone is comfortable with this, so if you're a bit like him, just skip this post and wait for the next one, which I'm sure will involve me drinking too much and falling over, and may or may not involve a wedding dress and people who live in the carpet.)

I have several patches of endometriosis all through my pelvis, and a golf ball sized nodule in my small bowel (apparently there are two bowels, large and small, I don't just have one that's small, just to clarify... ahem... moving on...) this explains why I don't poo! And you always thought I was joking......

I'm having an operation that has two parts, the first part is led by my gynaecologist and involves keyhole surgery to remove the patches, the second is led by a general surgeon who will make an incision either across my abdomin or down the centre of my torso, then open the small bowel and remove the golf ball sized nodule.

The complications are that they don't know until they open the bowel how this nodule is attached, if it's easy to remove they just take it out, stitch up the bowel, stitch up me, job done, if it's not so easy and they have to make a larger incision then we're into slightly grey territory involving the dreaded temporary colostomy bag because the bowel will need longer to heal. They do some funky thing and raise it up to the surface of your body to 'rest' it.

Estimated time in hospital - 1 week.

Estimated recovery period - 6 to 8 weeks.

When can they do the operation - hopefully March but probably May because the two surgeons have to co-ordinate their diaries, and they both have huge waiting lists.

Chance of the disease recurring - 20-30% after 4 years, which I think is pretty good!

So there we go, it turns out that it's a much bigger procedure than I thought it was, I'll be in theatre for about 4 hours, it takes two surgeons, it's pretty much 50/50 whether or not I have to have the temporary colostomy (in fact, I think it's actually called an illeostomy but what the difference is I don't know) and it means I'll be pretty poorly for up to two months. That's kind of why this post is called 'Facts, that's all for now', because I've been processing this for the last couple of days and have ultimately decided that I prefer denial, denial works for me, so I'm going back there, ignorance is bliss and all that, frankly I just can't be bothered with all the shaking and spontaneous wailing that comes with facing the truth, you never get anything done!

I know that I had some pretty big things planned for 2007 that may not happen now, and I may have to let some people down, I can't say anything about this except I'm sorry, I'll do my best and I absolutely promise to fulfill my obligations to the best of my ability.

Ta da! That's it, could be worse, could be soooo much worse, just got to remember that.