June 2016 – Exmoor and Gerry Health Update

The NHS played another blinder a couple of weeks ago. Gerry was rung on a Saturday morning and offered an appointment with a surgeon the following Wednesday.  The surgeon agreed to do the excision biopsy and gave us a date for a couple of days after our return from a holiday to France. Gerry then checked with the Haematologist who had by then received the results of a PET Scan done at the Churchill hospital in Oxford the previous week.  As a result, he suggested that he would rather that we did not go to France and that the operation should be done ASAP.  The surgeon reprogrammed and I had the surgery this Tuesday. I was offered the chance to stay in hospital but elected to be a day case and recuperate at home.

 Last Friday morning having attended the hospital for a pre-op screening, we decided to go away for the night and headed off to Exmoor.  We managed a lovely walk near Dunster Castle and stayed in the village of Nether Stowey for the evening.  The next morning we set off to meander home and enjoy some of the Exmoor villages and towns.  We stopped at the National Trust property of Knightshayes near Tiverton and enjoyed a walk around the gardens and were amazed at the colours in the trees and the lily pond in particular.

Apart from volume of traffic on the M5, we had a pleasant journey home - a short but very pleasant break.

The surgery went well and Gerry is now recovering well from the general anaesthetic as much as the operation itself.  Now it is a question of waiting for the results of the biopsy to determine the grade of lymphoma and hence develop a treatment plan.

Thanks NHS for the personal touch and speedy service.