Well… I made it through!! And yes… I should have posted an update earlier than today (Monday after my surgery on Thursday)… but I’ll be honest… I just wasn’t feeling up to it.  Lol.  That whole surgery thing really takes it out of ya… kind of leaves you feeling like a used up rag-doll.  Started feeling like myself again yesterday… and today… I’m definitely getting some spunk back.  Started wearing my visor again and everything!! Lol.  Anyway… 

Flew down to San Diego as discussed on Tuesday and had our appointments with the surgical team etc.  It came down to crunch time deciding for sure to go forward with the HIPEC regardless or not.  And in the end my decision was to stick with my gut and not go forward with HIPEC if there was “zero” signs of disease.  I explained my main reasons in the last post.  And those same reasons held out.  Although I definitely went back and forth that last day… and almost said let’s go for it.  And as you’ll remember this “huge” decision could very well have been a moot point because if he found even a hint of disease, I wanted him to go forward with it.  And frankly… it was likely that he was going to find disease.  He made it clear that he usually does find something. I let him know that if he had any inkling that there was a possibility of disease… I wanted him to do the HIPEC.  If there were any “grey” areas… error on the side of doing the HIPEC.  Those were my words.  

Wednesday was a bummer… I had “bowel prep” 🙁 so my last meal was at 8:00am and I started the treatment around 11:00am.  Yikes… not pleasant!!  I’ll stop at that… but let me know if you have any questions… it’s pretty self explanatory.  Not much else to say about that day… lol.  Went to bed pretty hungry and not looking forward to the next day.  

Thursday was the big day.  Woke up and checked in to the hospital at 5:30 am.  They got me all decked out in my purple surgical gown very quickly.  By 6:30 they were putting in my epidural and “helping” me feel comfortable.  And by 7:15 I was kissing my wife goodbye and being rolled back in to the O.R.  It’s sort of surreal as it’s happening.  Watching this massive hustle and bustle going on around you.  All these people playing some part in this major surgery… for me!! It’s Weird.  I tried to take a moment and acknowledge everyone in the room at least once… but by then I was already a bit loopy and I think I was coming off as a weirdo.  I don’t hardly even remember the moment when my anesthesiologist told me to count down from 100… the next thing I remember is waking up with my wife and the anesthesiologist in my little recovery room.  Obviously at this point it’s hard to remember exactly how things went but I remember very clearly being told that there was no HIPEC procedure… that my insides looked beautiful and although he tried desperately to find any place where some disease had hidden… he was unable to find any.  He then finished with my Hemicolectomy and closed me up.  He also took some “washings” while he was in there… (which is basically him washing some saline solution over some of my organs and pulling that out for further testing).  So in the end… my decision did come in to play… and I have no regrets about that decision.   In the end… if it returns… I’ll always know that it could have just as easily returned even if I had the HIPEC done.  And if it returns I’ll be monitoring religiously and I will have the HIPEC at that time. Dr. Baumgartner did mention how rare it is to catch this type of cancer early enough to not see any spread at this point.  And just today in my morning checkup with the Doc… he let us know that my washings all came back negative for any signs of cancer.  So yeah… apparently my guts are good lookin’… and don’t have any visible disease on them at this time.  Woo hoo!! I’ll take it…

Recovery has been rough… the first three days was a real pain (no pun intended… lol).  Each little milestone seemed pretty massive from a recovery point of view. For example… I could only suck on these tiny sponges filled with water for my first day.  I honestly have never been so thirsty.  I was certainly getting all the fluids I needed but my mouth was soooo dry… unbearably.  So when I was able to have a glass of water on day 2… it was like someone had just handed me the keys to the world!!! Later on day 2 I got to have some chicken broth… and wow!! I love me some chicken broth… lol!! I really wanted to get my recovery going… so I was up and walking short laps on day 2… and on Saturday (day 3) I pushed for three walks with much more time sitting in chairs.  I got my Foley catheter removed finally on day 3 (definitely a good day when that bad boy comes out… OUCH!!) and because I was peeing sooo much my nurse removed my IV fluids which had me down to only my epidural and my self administered I.V. narcotic hanging on that pole that follows you around everywhere. So I made it a goal to not use the pain meds for all of Saturday night and Sunday (day 4)… which worked out pretty good.  I had my epidural removed early on day 4 and was put on a good dose of oral tylenol for the remainder. So by Sunday night I got to sleep unrestricted without any hanging bags and beeping dispensers.  So here I am on Monday (Day 5) and I’m pretty sure I might get out of here tomorrow. I’ve dropped as many hints as I can to get this going.  I think they wanted to monitor me one more night to make sure I don’t get nauseated or have any issues keeping food down. I’m still on soft foods… but that’s okay for me… I don’t mind keeping it simple. It’s agony to sneeze or cough… and getting out of chairs and beds is pretty painful… but other than that it’s bearable.  Walking is not bad… I just get tired very quickly.  So in my “expert” opinion… there is no reason to keep me here any longer.  But we’ll see.  

Now I’ve still got to wait till my lymph nodes come back from pathology… and then we’ll have an even fuller picture.  Then it’s time to present this tumor and all the facts to the “tumor board” (which I don’t fully understand quite yet)… and they will recommend if I should go forward with intravenous chemotherapy or not.  I’m told it’s possible that they could recommend chemotherapy for me even if my lymph nodes come back negative and I have no other signs of disease.  This would most likely be because it is such an aggressive cancer.  But I won’t know till I get the results from pathology back.  So more to come on that.  

Sorry for all the jumbled information in this post.  It’s much tougher keeping coherent thoughts flowing from my phone while sitting in a hospital bed getting my vitals taken every two hours… dreaming of tacos and potato chips.  What I know is that I got the right hand side of my colon removed… and a very experienced doctor saw no further signs of disease in my abdominal cavity.  The washings he took during surgery came back negative for tumors and I’m now waiting on the pathology from my lymph nodes.  I know that there is always a possibility my cancer can recur. But I’m feeling pretty good right now about the fact that we caught it as early as we did… and that I probably could go into “organ modeling” since my insides are so pretty… lol.  

I’ll definitely get an update in later this week… and definitely get the word out as soon as I hear back about my pathology.  Thanks again to everyone for your support… we can’t begin to tell you how much it means to us.