How mindfulness turned a scary operation into a peaceful experience...
Below are my before and after photos from two rhinoplasty surgeries I had 5 years apart. Also with completely different hair!
Posting them feels really scary. We’re so conditioned to strive for perfection and look a certain way. It actually took me a while to decide to share this. But I’m here…
After disliking my nose for most of my life and it being the centre of major insecurity, I finally decided to do something about it. Nothing unusual here so far. But it was when I had my second revision surgery a few years later that I noticed a major shift and how powerful mindfulness is.
The difference between my first surgery and my second surgery was huge.
I was so nervous and very tense leading up to the first one. I remember being on the operating table in a side room beforehand with the anaesthetist, physically shaking. Literally with my whole body. I felt cold and clammy and just ill all over my body.
Afterwards I was told that the surgery went well but I had a lot of bruising and my whole face was tender. For a while after I was very tentative and nervous touching my nose at all. As I recovered the bruising went down and finally after a year the swelling was gone.
A few years later I had to have a revision surgery. A lump had formed on one side of the tip and one of my nostrils was thinner making it difficult to breath on occasion. It took me a year to make the appointment with a surgeon for this. There was still an echo of my previous experience there which to be honest, frightened me.
But once I’d made the decision to go ahead, I felt ok. The mild panic subsided. In fact this time my whole experience could’t have been more different.
I felt calm, grounded and ready. I’m sure the fact that this was my second time around helped, but there was something else present. I felt different. Like my mind and body knew it was going to be ok. That if I trusted my body, and focused my mind, it would be ok.
I believe the main difference was that I’d been practicing mindfulness for the years in between these two surgeries. When I first discovered what mindfulness was, I used it to help with stress and to improve the way I communicated with my husband. I had no idea it would help with things like operations.
Some of the ways it changed my experience was by;
🌿 Being honest with myself in the present moment about “what is…”
Sitting in the waiting room for my 2nd operation was a peaceful event. I even meditated and had a little nap while I waited to be called for surgery. I could focus on what was actually happening in my room in the here and now instead of time travelling to a scary future of “what if this happens….”
🌿 Knowing how to calm my nervous system when I noticed I had started to feel anxious.
As I was wheeled in to the operating theatre I could feel my heart rate increase. But rather than heading off in my mind with a story as to why and what if, I stayed focused on my breathing which led me back to the present moment. Where I was fine. Being taken care of. Safe.
🌿 Trusting and accepting the process
This is a big one! Trusting in the bigger picture and myself and my body. Trusting that it knows what to do if I accepted what was happening and simply allowed it.
I’m not saying this is a quick fix. It took time to get to this point and truly feel these changes and embody these techniques and mindsets, but it got me thinking about how this can help others.
During one of my follow ups with my surgeon, Dr Nicholas Eynon-Lewis, we got talking about how this could benefit people who are having surgeries. How it would calm their anxieties beforehand and ease their worries afterwards, aiding a swifter recovery. With some specific techniques, mindfulness practices could certainly improve their experience and recovery.
We decided to wrIte a paper, which you can read and download here, and I’m now conducting some research in order to create a study that includes mindfulness in pre and post operative care. I know with some simple tools and some guidance people can have a better experience of something that so often can feel scary and stressful.
If you’d like to have a chat with me about your experience of surgery, or if you’ve got an up coming procedure that you’re a bit nervous about, feel free to email me to arrange a chat.
With over 10 million surgical procedures taking place every year in the UK, this is an important topic to explore.
