To the hospital and back home again

Hi everyone.

I'm back from the hospital, and happy to be home. It's taken me a while to post, because I didn't know if everyone wanted to hear the gory details, or would rather be spared. I guess I'll just hit the highlights

Monday:
I get to the hospital early in the morning. After I'm admitted, gowned and in my room, the nurse comes in with two one-liter bottles. The nurse explains that I have to spend the day on "bowel prep", so I have to drink both bottles of this clear liquid within the next couple of hours. I was scared because I knew it was going to be nasty. I noticed that one of the bottles had a big red sticker on it which read: "NOT FOR ORAL CONSUMPTION, USE RECTALLY ONLY".
So I say to my nurse, "Um, excuse me, but are you sure I'm supposed to drink this?"
She takes the bottle, puts on her glasses, and says, "oh, this one is for tomorrow, don't drink this one." She checked the other one, and read....1000ml, Mannitol, yes, yes, drink this one by noon. She takes the enema bottle out of the room, and I started drinking the mannitol, it tasted like Vitamin Water so it was fine. Still, I was kinda freaked out that I almost DRANK the enema, I decided I better keep a sharp eye on this nurse.
The doctor comes in and sees that my nurse is Sally, he says, oh great, you have Sally, she is the best nurse in the hospital, you won't have any problems. I didn't know what to say. I knew better to rat my nurse out so I just kept my mouth shut and my eyes open---when I wasn't sedated.

Lesson learned for Monday: Nurses are overworked and sometimes can make mistakes, ask them what they are giving you and what it's for. It may save you from drinking something you shouldn't.


Tuesday:

Time to go under the knife. I was scared, scared, scared when they came to wheel me down to pre-op. The anesthesiologist reminded me of a British spy with good teeth. He knew I was nervous, he was very nice to me. Eventually I was rolled into an OR. It was bigger than I thought. Tons of people rushing around prepping and counting sponges. I remember thinking, I can't believe they are going through all this trouble for me. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in Post-op. I don’t know how to explain post-op, but when I woke up, everything that I could move on body hurt. My belly hurt, my sides hurt, my eyelashes hurt. I felt like I had been hit by a semi. I wanted to cry but couldn’t because it hurt too much to cry. I also couldn’t move my legs, and that was very upsetting. I told the nurse I wanted to go back to sleep. I don’t remember what she said, but eventually I fell back asleep and when I awoke I was back in my room. I had a PCA (patient-controlled analgesic) which is a push-button device that dispenses medicine as needed. I spent the rest of the day pushing the button and passing out.

Get your fat ass out of that bed:
Somewhere along the line I lost a whole day. The nurse was telling me that I needed to get up and walk, I thought she was nuts, I was like, you can’t be serious, I just got out of surgery. She told me that I got out of surgery the day before and I needed to get out of bed and walk. So I did. With much difficulty. Wyatt was really terrific, he was with me the whole time. Helping me in and out of bed, fetching me ice, and just letting me sleep.

The blog entry that would never end:
Anyway to make a War and Peace-sized blog entry just a tad smaller, I will try to condense the next few turn of events……

Over the next few days I spent eating broth and waiting to pass gas. I never had anyone cheer at a bowel movement before but my nurse thought it was terrific when the blessed event finally arrived.

Dr. Jacquet decided that after I was able to do the three Ps (pee, pass gas, poop), then it’s time to go home. So here I am, at home recovering. Watching Cheaters, and finally seeing those movies deep deep within my Netflix queue. I finally saw Back to The Future and The Godfather. I think tomorrow I will watch the sequel.

I met the doctor who is going to be my oncologist. He reminds me of a very calm George Costanza. He seems very thorough. He thinks my cancer is at stage II, but won’t know for sure until more tests are preformed. I can’t tell you how happy I am, because this wasn’t the news I was expecting, but it was the news I wanted. Thanks everyone for your prayers.

The Good News: The tumor was successfully removed, along with part of my colon, The tumor had not penetrated the wall of the colon. Nineteen lymph nodes were examined for cancer and all nineteen came back negative. Yeah.

Coming up Next: Staples are coming out tomorrow.