Well, I had my surgery on 4/18/22. It has taken me two weeks to gather the physical and creative energy needed to write a blog post. I was in the hospital for 4 days. Oh. My. God. The first week was sooooo hard! I did not think it would be that painful. It was a laparoscopic low anterior resection with ileostomy. A few poke holes in my abdomen, and one horizontal 5-inch incision low down on the abdomen (same incision used for a C-section), to get the tumor out. And then my ileostomy in my upper abdomen on the right. The surgery apparently lasted for 7 hours, and wasn’t super straight-forward, but everything ended up fine despite the hurdles. When I got to my hospital room, the actual incisions didn’t seem to specifically hurt, but I felt like my whole belly had been run over by a bus. In addition to that, the CO2 gas that they pump in to your abdomen causes the worst shoulder pain after surgery! The shoulder pain was worse if I took a deep breath, so I tried not to, even though I knew I didn’t want post-op pneumonia! That shoulder pain lasted a good week. Luckily, week two was much more manageable. I walked to the bus stop to pick up my 2nd grader on day 8. It’s weird, but when I walk sometimes, my abdominal muscles tighten, and it feels just like Braxton Hicks contractions (don’t worry, I’m not pregnant!). Uncomfortable to say the least. That also seems to be getting better. I have to give myself a daily shot of a blood-thinner (for a month), so I don’t get a blood clot in my legs. It’s actually not that bad….my skin is numb from my belly button down to my lower incision, so I just use that area for the injections. It’s like giving an injection to someone else because I can’t feel it…weird. But my belly looks like Shelby’s arm in Steel Magnolias, like a battle zone of bruises from the injections.
With the magic of health records, and patients having access to them, I got a notification on my phone the day after surgery as I lay in my hospital bed. My surgical pathology was finalized. No evidence of residual cancer in the recto-sigmoid specimen (yay! — my tumor had actually already been removed endoscopically in March, because all of the biopsies pointed to it being benign), but one lymph node out of 28 was positive for cancer. Which may not seem like much, but even one lymph node buys you a ticket to chemo. Sigh. Thanks to the lymph node, my rectal cancer is officially stage 3a (or T2N1M0 for those of you who know TNM staging). I don’t know yet what kind of chemo or for how long I’ll need to do it, but I’ve been told it’s not the kind that makes you lose your hair, so that’s a good thing, right? I can continue to see my patients without having to answer questions about my own health (believe me, they would ask). So this was supposed to be the summer of me. And it will be: it will be all about me and my naps and my nausea and my neuropathy (a common side effect of this type of chemo). Maybe it won’t be all that bad? Only time will tell.
My ileostomy, named “Squirt”, has been relatively easy to take care of. He sometimes makes squirting noises, which the kids and I think is hilarious (although it wouldn’t be as funny if I was in a quiet room with someone who didn’t know I had one!). The main thing that bums me out about Squirt is that I have a restricted diet. However, it’s not what you think when you imagine a diet restriction. It is a low-fiber, low-residue diet. So basically, I have to avoid all that is healthy! I’m not supposed to have any raw fruits or vegetables, no salad, nothing high fiber. I can’t go through the summer without having fruits! The worry is that your ileostomy can get blocked, because high-fiber foods don’t digest as well. But because I’m me, I have already cheated. Good strawberries are starting to show up in the stores. So I have had strawberries the past few days (with Cool Whip of course!). I just cut each strawberry into about 20 pieces! I feel like I’m a baby learning how to eat. Don’t want to choke on anything! But I’m bummed that absolute no-no’s are grapes (I love grapes!) and corn (I wait all year for good corn on the cob!). The strawberries seemed to cause no issues, so I will continue to experiment with other fruits as time goes on. Squirt and I will be buddies until about a month after chemo is finished, so probably into the fall. The picture is 4 regular-sized strawberries, cut up so small I could hardly see them.
The following is a well-traveled post that has been circulating for several years on facebook and other platforms; it’s about cancer treatment. I don’t know who the author is, but it’s funny, accurate, and scary at the same time.
“What’s it like to go through cancer treatment? It’s something like this: one day, you’re minding your own business, you open the fridge to get some breakfast, and OH MY GOD THERE’S A MOUNTAIN LION IN YOUR FRIDGE.
Wait, what? How? Why is there a mountain lion in your fridge? NO TIME TO EXPLAIN. RUN! THE MOUNTAIN LION WILL KILL YOU! UNLESS YOU FIND SOMETHING EVEN MORE FEROCIOUS TO KILL IT FIRST!
So you take off running, and the mountain lion is right behind you. You know the only thing that can kill a mountain lion is a bear, and the only bear is on top of the mountain, so you better find that bear. You start running up the mountain in hopes of finding the bear. Your friends desperately want to help, but they are powerless against mountain lions, as mountain lions are godless killing machines. But they really want to help, so they’re cheering you on and bringing you paper cups of water and orange slices as you run up the mountain and yelling at the mountain lion – “GET LOST, MOUNTAIN LION, NO ONE LIKES YOU” – and you really appreciate the support, but the mountain lion is still coming.
Also, for some reason, there’s someone in the crowd who’s yelling “that’s not really a mountain lion, it’s a puma” and another person yelling “I read that mountain lions are allergic to kale, have you tried rubbing kale on it?”
As you’re running up the mountain, you see other people fleeing their own mountain lions. Some of the mountain lions seem comparatively wimpy – they’re half grown and only have three legs or whatever, and you think to yourself – why couldn’t I have gotten one of those mountain lions? But then you look over at the people who are fleeing mountain lions the size of a monster truck with huge prehistoric saber fangs, and you feel like an ******* for even thinking that – and besides, who in their right mind would want to fight a mountain lion, even a three-legged one?
Finally, the person closest to you, whose job it is to take care of you – maybe a parent or sibling or best friend or, in my case, my husband – comes barging out of the woods and jumps on the mountain lion, whaling on it and screaming “GODDAMMIT MOUNTAIN LION, STOP TRYING TO EAT MY WIFE,” and the mountain lion punches your husband right in the face. Now your husband (or whatever) is rolling around on the ground clutching his nose, and he’s bought you some time, but you still need to get to the top of the mountain.
Eventually you reach the top, finally, and the bear is there. Waiting. For both of you. You rush right up to the bear, and the bear rushes the mountain lion, but the bear has to go through you to get to the mountain lion, and in doing so, the bear TOTALLY KICKS YOUR ***, but not before it also punches your husband in the face. And your husband is now staggering around with a black eye and bloody nose, and saying “can I get some help, I’ve been punched in the face by two apex predators and I think my nose is broken,” and all you can say is “I’M KIND OF BUSY IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED I’M FIGHTING A MOUNTAIN LION.”
Then, IF YOU ARE LUCKY, the bear leaps on the mountain lion and they are locked in epic battle until finally the two of them roll off a cliff edge together, and the mountain lion is dead.
Maybe. You’re not sure – it fell off the cliff, but mountain lions are crafty. It could come back at any moment.
And all your friends come running up to you and say “that was amazing! You’re so brave, we’re so proud of you! You didn’t die! That must be a huge relief!”
Meanwhile, you blew out both your knees, you’re having an asthma attack, you twisted your ankle, and also you have been mauled by a bear. And everyone says “boy, you must be excited to walk down the mountain!” And all you can think as you stagger to your feet is “**** this mountain, I never wanted to climb it in the first place.”
I am currently heading up the mountain, not knowing how big of a bear I’m going to need to help me. I’m hoping all I’ll need is a cute little black bear cub, but it could be a grizzly bear. I know I am super lucky and hopefully by the end of the year I will be done with cancer, something a lot of people only wish they could say. It could be so much worse (I’ve always been a glass-half-full kinda girl). I will post more once I know what my summer holds. In the meantime, if you are 45 or older, and haven’t had a colonscopy yet, GET SCREENED!
Life in the Outside Lane 