Dodged Bullet

I just had a visit from Dr. Simmang a little while ago, and he said I am cleared to get out of this place.  However, I’m having some ileostomy bag seal issues that need to be figured out before I can really leave, and since it’s the weekend none of the ostomy nurses are working.  I don’t want to go home leaking body fluids, but I also don’t want to wait around until Monday just because of a leaky bag.  I just called the nurse’s station to see if I can get an extra bag kit, and I’m going to see if I can MacGyver this thing onto me so I can get out of here.  I figure all I need to do is make it through the weekend, and then hopefully I can get this thing sorted out.  All they’re doing here is taping gauze onto me, and I can do that at home.  Let’s see if this works.

While I wait for my nurse, here’s the other news from Dr. Simmang.  He sent tissue from my colon, rectum, and lymph nodes to the lab for testing, and that pathology report came back today.  It turns out that in three of the larger polyps, there were indeed small cancer tumors; two in my colon, one in my rectum.  Dr. Simmang says that this is the earliest stage, most superficial cancer we could hope for, and it looks like nothing spread to my lymph nodes or anywhere else.  I shouldn’t require any other treatment, but he does want me to meet regularly with an oncologist from here on out so I can continue to get screened for any other issues.

It’s very surreal to realize I actually had colon cancer.  This whole time I’ve been operating under the information that this was to prevent cancer, but now it turns out that it actually removed it.  As Taylor said, “You dodged the bullet, but not without it grazing your ear.”  This brings into a whole new light the miracle that we caught this in time.  If we had waited even a year longer, we might have been in big trouble.  I had been having symptoms of something being wrong with my insides for the last ten years, and I had been told all I needed was a high fiber diet and probiotics.  Praise God I finally went to a doctor who took my symptoms seriously and convinced me to get a colonoscopy!

Update: My nurse brought me a new ileostomy bag kit and told me that if it is leak-free for the next hour, I can go home.  If it leaks before then, I’m staying until Monday.  This may be my strangest prayer request ever, but please pray that my ileostomy bag would not leak before 4:30pm Central time!

Post-Op

Well, I am colon-less and doing well!  It is so evident that I have been prayed for.  My surgery actually went better than normal.  Standard procedure for this surgery is that they would do three small laparoscopic cuts and one larger incision to remove the colon and rectum through.  If they had difficulties, they would make that incision larger for a hand assist or would have to do a large ribs-to-pelvis incision.  In my case, I have no large incisions!  They did the entire thing laparoscopically!  My surgeon hadn’t even mentioned that to me beforehand as a possibility.  But he said that because I’m young and in good shape, they were able to do it.  My anesthesiologist said that my surgery was one of the technically best he had ever seen.  Praise God!  Dr. Clifford Simmang is now akin to Superman in my eyes.  I hope you never need to have any of your guts removed, but if you do, go to him!

Also, my recovery is going very well.  Apparently it usually takes a couple of days for your digestive system to get functioning again after surgery like this, so my nurses were surprised when my ileostomy was up and running just a few hours after my surgery.  My nurse yesterday said I’m doing a great job of getting up by myself, and a home healthcare representative came by and said that I might be discharged earlier than expected.  Yesterday, my anesthesiologist asked if I had been able to eat anything and keep it down, such as Jell-o.  When I told him I had actually had a pork chop and mashed sweet potatoes for lunch, he was amazed.  For such a hard thing, everything is going better than I could have hoped for.  Is God good, or what?

I have been so blessed by my visitors, and several extra chairs have had to be pulled into my room to accommodate.  A couple of times my nurses have come in to take my vitals and have commented that it looked like I was having a party in here.  God has been so good to me in this.  I was worried that since I was having my surgery in Dallas it would be harder for people to come visit, so I am extremely thankful that so many friends are making the effort to come here and see me.  My wonderful husband has been at my side constantly and has not complained once about the many things I have asked him to help me with.  Also, Evie seems to be having a wonderful time with my mom at a nearby hotel.  I was so encouraged when I got to visit with her yesterday at one of the sitting areas here.  She was laughing and smiling and crawling all over the place.  Praise God that my absence has not been too hard on her!

Of course, there are some hard things.  I am in pain, yes, but it is manageable.  I had one rather embarrassing exploding ileostomy bag incident while I was taking one of my victory laps around the floor, and I am very done with being woken up at 3:30am to have my blood drawn.  Nurses are hit or miss.  I actually got so frustrated waiting around for one of my nurses to come and empty my ileostomy bag that I just started doing it myself.  They were a bit surprised, but they’re okay with me doing it as long as I record the volume of my output.  I feel like it’s one of my few ways to be a little feisty, so I’m doing it.  Every time I do something for myself that they haven’t actually given me permission to do yet, there’s this tiny feeling of sticking it to the man.  I like it.

The next three months with my ileostomy will require some adjustment, but it’s not too bad.  An ostomy nurse came by yesterday and talked to me, and as she said, I didn’t want one, I never expected to have one, but it saved my life.  It’s a little weird looking at my belly and seeing part of my small intestine sticking out, but it helps to know that this is just a temporary thing until I have my second surgery.  Even if I had to have it the rest of my life, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I so appreciate all of your prayers, and I ask that you continue to pray for my recovery and my adjustment period as I get back to life at home sometime in the next few days.  I know some things will be very hard, but God is gracious.  He has gotten me through this far, and His mercies are new every morning.  May God continue to bless you and your neighbor through you!

Tomorrow

Well, here I am.  I’m sitting in our hotel room close to the hospital and just got off the phone with my anesthesiologist who gave me the rundown of what’s going to happen tomorrow morning.  I’m feeling a little queasy from the bowel prep I had to drink, but I’m starting to feel like a pro at this.  By the way, if you ever want to feel like a daredevil, drive from Denton to Dallas while drinking about two weeks worth of laxative.  Dangerous!

I’ve been overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity and encouragement during this time.  We are blessed beyond measure.  I really just want to thank all of you who have been praying for me faithfully.  There have certainly been some rough times emotionally, especially this last week.  But yesterday, my church family gathered around me and prayed for me, and I truly felt more at peace than I have in probably a month.  Sometimes prayer changes the situation, but I think more often it changes us.  That, perhaps, is the greater miracle.  This has been a hard time, and I suspect that at times I have truly been depressed.  Sometimes it’s been hard to look forward with anything other than dread.  But God has never stopped being good to me.  Thank you for being an instrument of his blessing to me.

I’ll leave you with some lyrics by one of my favorite songwriters, Sara Groves:

I believe in a blessing I don’t understand
I’ve seen rain fall on wicked and the just
Rain is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I believe in a peace that flows deeper than pain
That broken find healing in love
Pain is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I will open my hands, will open my heart
I will open my hands, will open my heart
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes
To all that You have for me

I believe in a fountain that will never dry
Though I’ve thirsted and didn’t have enough
Thirst is no measure of his faithfulness
He withholds no good thing from us
No good thing from us, no good thing from us

I will open my hands, will open my heart
I will open my hands, will open my heart
I am nodding my head an emphatic yes
To all that You have for me

January 24th

January 24th: The day I say bye-bye to my colon.  This past week, I struggled to make a decision regarding what surgery to have, and now it is decided and on the calendar.  Here is the best analogy I have come up with for making this decision: There are two extremely unsavory meal options before you.  Let’s say, oh, live worms and something unidentifiable and moldy.  You could say, thank you very much, but I’m not hungry, except for the fact that there’s a man holding a gun to your head who will shoot you if you don’t eat one.  So, both options are better than being shot.  You just have to decide which one is the lesser evil.  Since you’re going to have to eat one of them, you start to calculate the nutritional value of both.  You might as well be objective about this.  That’s what the last week has been like.  I have made my decision, though, and now it just comes down to eating the stuff.  Or, in my case, having surgery to form the lower part of my small intestines into what they call a J-pouch, having a temporary ileostomy, and then going back in for another surgery in about three months to reconnect the plumbing, so to speak.  This seems like the best option for me, but it is not without downsides and risks.  What’s hard is that I feel fine now, and this surgery will mean feeling far from fine for quite some time.  Sometimes I feel a bit in denial about needing this at all.  As one of my doctors put it, though, there is a “silent killer” inside me, and I need to get it out.  That would be the man with the gun.

A few other updates: I got my CT scan results back, and everything looks clear.  Praise God!  The biopsy results came back from my GI tract scope as well, and they were slightly less clear.  There were some polyps in my stomach, which is pretty normal, but the pathology report came back saying that there has been some cell change in those polyps.  So while they are not cancerous yet, they may not be as benign as previously thought.  Instead of having another GI scope in five years, they want me to have another in just one year.  So while it is a matter of some concern, it isn’t of “we need to do surgery on your stomach immediately” concern.  That’s nice.  I think one such organ is quite enough for right now.

The last couple of days have been a bit hard emotionally as I’ve had to face the reality that this surgery is going to happen.  I think one of the hardest things is knowing that my time in the hospital and recuperating is going to be hard on our daughter, who is just hitting the clingy I-need-Mommy stage.  I keep reminding myself, though, that by being away from her for a little while now, I have a much better shot at being there for her and any other children God gives us for the long run.  It’s either surgery now or cancer later.  As hard as it is, I’ll take the surgery.

Thank you so much for your prayers.  Those prayers and the grace of God give me my greatest hope of getting through all of this safe, sound, and sane.  I was recently reminded that we do not only come to God as our lord, but also as our father.  Not only is He in control, but He cares.  He listens, and He is for us.  He hates disease and illness; it is one of the things that He will make right in the end.  He is ever our greatest hope.  May God, our Father, bless you and your neighbor through you today!