I'm Iain Dale. I present the Evening show on LBC radio and I was here - oh, my goodness, when was it - the sixth of September to have my gallbladder out. I think it was about the end of July, the 27th of July. It was a Saturday evening. I'd been around to the neighbours at my house in Norfolk and just had drinks and canapes. I went home, started to feel ill, I was sick and then I had this sort of pain down my right hand side. It wasn't sort of like, it was horrible but not like acute. And I just thought I'd got food poisoning. And I couldn't sleep because I couldn't find a position to sleep in. And I just assumed it would all go away the next day. But it didn't. Or the next. And so, on Monday evening I went to A&E. They immediately said ‘It's the gallbladder’. And it turned out that it was perforated, which meant that it was leaking bile into my stomach.

I don't know whether this is the case, but I think that must have been going on for quite some time because throughout the previous year, I must admit I felt quite run down. They said they would take it out the next day, but it turned out to be far too infected and inflamed. And so they couldn't do that. And they said 'You have to wait six weeks' And then they said, well, we say six weeks, but it's actually more like 18 because of the waiting list. I was in hospital for six days in Tunbridge Wells and I have to say the treatment there was fantastic and I would have quite happily have had the operation on the NHS, but I couldn't wait 18 weeks because of my job.

So I've got BUPA. So I thought, well, and I also wanted to have the same consultant that treated me in Tunbridge Wells. So I did a bit of private detective work and worked out where he operated from and Benenden was the hospital. I just rang up and I said, look, I'd like to have it done with this particular consultant. And it was all really, really smooth. Well, I came in to see Mr Hasan who treated me in Tunbridge Wells. And we were quite clear, I did need to have the operation and then he suddenly said 'But it won't be me that's carrying it out'. And I thought, oh, well, that's a bit odd. But then he said 'No, Mr Hamouda will do it because it's his area of expertise'. I think I had the pre-op assessment on the 22nd of August, so sort of three weeks before the actual operation, and got a lot of good advice on what I should be eating - or more importantly what I shouldn't be eating.

And yeah, again, it was all very smooth. Everything was easy to understand, Mr Hasan explained it all very easily and I just wanted to get it over with. I think one of the things that strikes you about Benenden Hospital, is it almost looks like a new hospital. I don't know when every bit was built, but you walk in and it could be just a pristine, new hospital. The cleanliness is outstanding. Everything here seems quite serene. Everybody I've dealt with here has been kind, polite, nice. I've had quite a few medical issues over the past couple of years. I fell off a theatre stage into an orchestra pit, 12 foot drop, so terrible problems with my knees. I then fractured my hip. I fell over at the top of a tube escalator. So I've had quite a few experiences over the last couple of years of either operations or just being in hospital. I wasn't anxious about feeling anything or even being aware of what was going on because I knew that I was going to have a general anaesthetic and ok, there are risks to that, and they were all explained to you very fully.

Before the operation, the anaesthetist comes around along with the consultant or the surgeon and they tell you exactly what's going to happen, how long it might take. And all you ever remember is being wheeled down to the operating theatre, you see the anaesthetist and that's it. And the next thing you know, you're back in your room and you eventually wake up. That process was quite interesting in that the anaesthetist came to see me after I'd been awake for about an hour and he told me that the operation nearly had to be cancelled because it turned out to be a lot more complicated, the infection was much worse than they thought. And I think at one stage, Mr Hamouda did think about stopping. And because it was all keyhole surgery but it was so infected that he wasn't sure that he would be able to do it and then they would have had to stop and presumably on another day, I'd have had to come back and they'd have had to open me up.

Well, he persevered and the bit of the operation that should have taken about 40 minutes took two and a half hours. So you can tell how serious it was. Of course, I was totally unaware of any of this at the time. And I thought it was good of the anaesthetist to tell me that, just so I realised sort of how difficult it had been. I had no pain at all. There was discomfort around the sort of tummy area because if you take the gallbladder out all the other bits around there, they've got to find their place again so that they sort of wobble around. I mean, you can't feel them wobbling around, but that's presumably what they're doing just trying to settle down. So the operation was on the Friday, but by the Tuesday, all of that discomfort had gone, I only twice, I think, used painkillers, but it wasn't even really pain. It was just discomfort.

You can only have soft food. So, for four days I was on soup and jelly. I was like, living like a three year old again, quite enjoyed it, actually forgot how much I like jelly. And then gradually you sort of go onto scrambled eggs, sort of, but not really solid food and you lose a hell of a lot of weight. I mean, the whole process, from the end of July I was told I shouldn't eat dairy food at all. And I really religiously stuck to that. I lost a stone and a half in those six weeks and 10 days after the operation, I went back to work and I went on air at 7 p.m. and within five minutes I just thought to myself, oh, my god, you feel like a different person which people on social media told me I would, but I didn't really believe them. I was sharp. I was on it. I was just on total top form and there was a feeling that I hadn't had, should we say for probably up to a year. A couple of weeks after that I then started to go back to the gym again, made sure I didn't sort of do, too much that would involve moving sort of this area.

And we're what now, sort of 22nd of October. And I feel completely normal again. The surgery has been quite transformational in many ways because I now realise that for the previous year, I'd felt a bit down. I hadn't realized it at the time, but since the surgery I just feel completely transformed, revived almost sort of rejuvenated. I think that's the word I would probably use to describe it. And it can only be because of the surgery. Nothing else in my life has changed. So, I'm just so grateful that it turned out okay. I can't fault any aspect of the treatment that I've had or the dealings that I've had with people here from the admin staff, the people that book appointments, incredibly helpful. Again, it doesn't seem as if it's just a job to them. They seem to be really just committed to providing a top class service.