My surgery was scheduled at Baylor Medical Center in Plano on May 22, 2012. We arrived at 10 am & they got us into the prep room by 10:30, which I thought was a bit early given the surgery wasn’t scheduled for noon. While they got me prepped quickly, surgery never happened at noon…they gave me my anesthesia around 11:30 a.m. & that’s the last thing I remember till they woke me up around 5 pm or so…I was in and out from there until they moved me to my room around 8 pm.
Dawnette stayed with me the first night, which was nice as I was in and out all that night in pain…I kept pushing that morphine button every 5 minutes or so…at least when I was awake! ;o)
Believe it or not, they had me get out of bed the next morning & walk over to the chair where I stayed the entire day until it was time to go to bed. The surgery supposedly went well, the doctor said he got everything…the cancer was about the size of a squash ball, or just a bit smaller than a tennis ball. I guess it was one of the largest rectal cancers he’d had to remove.
That first day, Wednesday, was tough…I had a catheter where I NEVER want one again…it was incredibly uncomfortable. They had me drinking water & chunking on ice all night Tuesday night & I guess my body adapted pretty well because around 11 am or so I heard this gurgling sound & liquid came out of the stoma.
Oh yes, I’m pretty sure I’d mentioned it already, but in most cases of rectal, colon, etc. cancer, the patient has to have a stoma (basically redirecting their bowel movements through a hole in their stomach) until the cancer area that was removed has healed completely (usually 4-6 months) and then they reverse the stoma & re-route things “back to normal”.
My situation, unfortunately, is permanent. In the first place, was the size of the cancer…as mentioned, it was the size of a squash ball, which is quite large. Secondly, the location of my cancer was only an inch and a half inside my rectum, so it was *extremely* low. Lastly, the “shape” of my cancer was such that it was semi-circular. If you think of your rectum in the shape of a cylinder, the cancer was not on the “side” of the cylinder, but it was semi-circular around the cylinder. All of that means that my stoma/colostomy is permanent…which I’m not all that happy with to be honest…I had hoped it was only temporary.