Narrator: It's 6:15 a.m., and Lori is being prepped for her scheduled cesarean, or c-section.Lori: I was instructed not to eat or drink anything after midnight last night.Nurse: This one is to monitor to see if you're having any contractions.Narrator: Part of the routine involves taking steps to reduce the risk of infection. While most women do just fine, 6 to 8 percent of c-section incisions end up infected.Wound care for a c-section begins before surgery. A nurse shaves your belly and gives you a preventive dose of antibiotics through an IV line.Nurse: This is antibiotic. Since her belly'll be open, it wards off any infection.Narrator: Once you're in the operating room, your belly is sterilized with Betadine or an antimicrobial antiseptic solution.Doctor: It's a big procedure. It's an abdominal surgery where we cut through the skin, we cut through the tissues underlying the skin, we cut through the uterus.Narrator: Dr. Radhi Kakarla is Lori's obstetrician. Lori will receive the most common type of incision, often called the bikini cut.

Doctor: The reason that we use the bikini cut or Pfannenstiel incision is that it is much easier to heal from that incision and the scarring is much less.Narrator: This type of incision is less obvious and often hidden beneath the bikini line.A vertical incision requires a longer healing time, and the scar is more noticeable.Once your baby's been delivered, your doctor will close your wound from the inside out. First she'll stitch your uterus closed, then the layers of tissue and inner skin, and finally, your outer skin.vacuum cleaner song robert earl keenDoctor: All the sutures that we use are absorbable sutures, so you don't have to have your stitches taken out.airflo bagless vacuum cleaner 2200w reviewNarrator: For the first 24 hours, your incision will be covered with a sterile bandage to reduce the chance of infection.oreck u2000r-1 vacuum cleaner upright commercial

Occasionally, incisions are secured with small strips of surgical tape, which fall off on their own, or staples, which are removed within the first week after surgery.Soon after returning to your room, you'll start receiving anti-inflammatory and pain medication. Some hospitals encourage women to hold an ice pack to their incision during the first day to reduce swelling.You'll need to stay in bed for 12 to 18 hours before trying to sit up or stand. Once you're able to get up and move, you'll be encouraged to do so. It's normal to feel significant pain around your incision. This may last for several weeks.Around 24 hours after surgery, your bandage will be removed. From this point on, the best way to promote healing is to expose your incision to the air as much as possible and to keep it dry and clean.Doctor: When patients leave the hospital, they are responsible for keeping an eye on their incision. And to make sure it doesn't look like an infected cut on your hand, which can be red, hot, and painful.

Narrator: Once Lori's able to get up and move around, she can shower.Nurse: You can clean your incision with regular soap and water.Narrator: Be sure to dry the incision after showering and expose the wound to the air.Don't apply any creams or ointments to the incision until your doctor says it's fully healed, usually about six weeks after surgery.Let me just take a look at your incision. Looks great, no redness, the incision looks like it's healing really really well. Are you up and about, walking around?Narrator: Walking gets the blood circulating and helps the healing process. Lots of sleep is also recommended.There are some things you shouldn't do for the first two weeks, like driving. Your doctor will outline other activities to avoid in the first four to six weeks of recovery.Doctor: You're probably going to go home tomorrow, so I just wanted to go over some instructions with you.No heavy lifting over 15 pounds. Take it easy on the stairs, and no sexual intercourse, no tampons, until you see us for your postpartum appointment.

The other things that you need to be very thoughtful of are first, most important, if you have a fever of greater than 101 you need to call us right away.Any excess bleeding – we define excess bleeding as one to two pads an hour for more than two to three hours. If you see your wound separating, you need to give us a call.Doctor: When you leave the hospital, your incision should feel soft to the touch. Over the next few days, there will feel like there is some hardness underneath your incision, and that's very normal, it's called the healing ridge.Narrator: If you follow your doctor's orders, you'll heal faster, though it may not improve the appearance of your scar.Doctor: How your incision heals depends on a lot of different things – first and foremost, genetics. We all heal and we all scar differently. Other things that can affect how your incision heals are your weight. If your incision has gotten infected or not.Narrator: One month after surgery, your incision may look a little darker than it did at first, which is a normal part of the healing process.

C-section scars tend to fade and shrink over time.Doctor: You'll know within six months to a year postpartum what your scar is going to look like.Narrator: Lori's scar appears to be healing well one week after her son Ryan's birth.Even though things look great on the outside, she still needs to follow her care instructions. Until she sees her doctor again four to six weeks later, she's in the prime recovery time. She needs to lie down as much as possible and take it slow.Gallstones are becoming increasingly common — a quarter of women over 60 will develop them. Here, Rosemary Randall, 67, from Whitchurch, Shropshire, tells about  a new procedure she had to shatter the stones using shockwaves 'I couldn't keep food down,' said Rosemary Randall Two years ago, I started getting frequent pains in my stomach and back. I’d be doing the gardening or be out shopping and I’d have to stop and lie down to make it bearable. Eventually it would go, but it often took a few hours to ease.

I put it down to indigestion, but within a few months it got more painful. I hate going to the doctors, so I just thought I’d put up with it.My husband, Malcolm, was a great support, but it was stopping me enjoying life. Our daughter, Louise, lives in Surrey with her husband and our two teenage grandchildren, but I hardly dared make the trip there only to end up in pain.Then, last October, two years after my symptoms had started, my skin started to change colour — I was going yellow.I could hardly move with the pain and couldn’t keep food down. I knew I had to see my GP.He sent me to hospital straight away, where I was sedated so they could do an endoscopy, where they put a tube with a tiny camera on the end of it down my throat. I had an ultrasound scan, too.The doctors said the problem was gallstones — I had loads of them.They explained that they are made of cholesterol and salts that form in the gallbladder, a little pear-shaped organ underneath the liver. You can live with gallstones with no symptoms, but if they start to block the gallbladder they cause pain and nausea.

They can also stop the flow of bile out of the gallbladder and liver, so it backs up — that’s why I’d become jaundiced. I was told gallstones were common, but a fatty diet can raise the risk, as they contain large quantities of cholesterol. I did eat a lot of dairy foods. The doctors said the gallstones had to come out, because they can cause infection which can be fatal. Under sedation I had a procedure where they put an endoscope down my throat and then put tiny baskets down the endoscope to remove the gallstones. But there was one stone that was too big to get out — it was an inch wide and was stuck in a bile duct.I had to have a tiny tube put into the bile duct to allow the bile to drain, otherwise I’d continue getting ill and you can even die from this. I was in hospital for a few days while they sorted me out as best they could.I was very worried. Then doctors told me that a new procedure was being carried out at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool on the NHS. Doctors would break up the gallstone into tiny bits using a probe that fires shock waves of energy, and then it could be removed bit by bit.

So, at the end of January, I went to Liverpool. I was given a general anaesthetic and was in theatre first thing in the morning. The procedure took 90 minutes.When I came to I felt fine — it was the first time in years I’d not had any sort of discomfort, sickness or pain. I went home at 5pm.Since then I’ve been able to go back to gardening and walking the dog, and seeing my daughter and grandchildren, and I make sure I eat healthily. I’m so happy to be feeling good again — this procedure changed my life. By the age of 60 nearly a quarter of women will have developed gallstones One in ten women and one in 20 to 30 men aged between 40 and 60 have gallstones. By the age of 60 nearly a quarter of women will have developed gallstones, but we’re not sure why women are more likely to develop them.In most cases, they do not cause symptoms. But one in 50 sufferers have pain and nausea.The risk increases with age, because of the time it takes a gallstone to build up. But we’re seeing an increasing number of younger people with the condition because a fatty, high-cholesterol diet makes you more vulnerable.

Gallstones form from a build-up of cholesterol in the gallbladder or its surrounding bile ducts. These ducts are tiny tubes that carry bile — a liquid that helps the body digest fats — from the liver to the gallbladder and then  into the digestive system. The most widely used treatment is surgery to remove the gallbladder. People can lead normal lives without a gallbladder as the liver still produces bile to digest food. Around 10 per cent of patients also have gallstones in the bile ducts and in this case, we will perform an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). Here, an endoscope is passed into the mouth and to the stomach where the bile ducts are. A fine tube is passed through the endoscope into the bile duct, and then the bile is injected with a dye to show any blockages. We make a 1cm cut at the opening of the bile duct, and then pass tiny baskets made of flexible metal down the endoscope to catch the gallstones. We may also insert and then inflate tiny balloons, to widen the bile duct.

However, around 10 to 20 per cent of gallstones can’t be removed with this technique, because they are too big or the bile duct is too narrow.Up until now, the only thing that could be done for these patients would be to place a tiny internal drain into the duct to keep the bile flowing — but the drains can get blocked, causing infection, so they have to be replaced every three months.But a new procedure — ERCP plus cholangioscopy — was developed in the U.S. six years ago. It’s challenging to perform and requires lots of training, so it has only recently become readily available in Britain.The equipment we use for it is called SpyGlass, which consists of a ‘baby endoscope’ that can pass through a standard endoscope and then into the bile duct to see abnormalities. We pass a tiny probe, less than a millimetre in width, down the endoscope. The probe — known as an electro-hydraulic lithotripter — emits electro-hydraulic shock waves that shatter the gallstones with bursts of energy from the probe.