Surgery – Two days and counting.

On Monday September 20th I go into the hospital to have my stomach surgically removed and rebuilt.  As you know, this is similar to having the engine in your car rebuilt, except the time in the shop is shorter.

The surgeon, Dr. Tseng, anticipates I will be in the hospital between five and seven days.  If there are no complications I will return home and be able to pretty much resume my normal activities.

The only limitations will be that I will be tired a lot and will not be allowed to do things like sky dive, jump motorcycles over canyons, or bounce on trampolines.  Another limitation will be that my stomach will be gone, but that just goes with the territory.

Surgery will last somewhere around six hours.  We will be at the hospital by 5:15 AM and the surgery will begin at 6:30 AM.

The operating nurses will update Anne about my progress every couple of hours.  Anne’s sister Marcia and niece Jennifer will update this blog when there is anything significant to report.  Personally, I’m going to kick back and catch a nap.

Following surgery I’ll be moved to the ICU for a day or so.  At that point I’ll have quite a few tubes running out of various of orifices.  Some will be temporary orifices that have been custom built as part of this science project.

When it is decided to be appropriate some of the more annoying tubes will be removed and I’ll be moved to a regular room.  At this point they will insist I get out of bed, move around, and take short walks down the hall.  This is cool because I like taking walks.

The first few days promise to be fairly rocky, but it should get better soon.  Towards the end of my hospital stay I should be feeling relatively good.

In fact, towards the end the only reason I’ll be there is so they can keep an eye on me while I test drive my rebuilt stomach.  If it has leaky valves or needs a new head gasket they want me close by so they can repair it before the warranty runs out.

When I leave the hospital I’ll be eating mushy foods for several weeks, then graduating to the hard stuff.  From then on it’s a matter of practicing using my new stomach until I develop a feel for its strengths and limitations.

On Friday we met with Dr. Ey, the oncologist, and he became the fourth doctor to be exuberant about the results of the endoscopic ultrasound test.  He made a rough estimate that only one in five people who go through my form of chemo have such positive results.

As soon as I adequately recover from the surgery we’ll schedule the next round of chemo.  When that chemo will start is pretty much up to me, but I’m leaning towards starting it as soon as possible.

As entertaining as this experience has been, I’m ready to get in and get it over with.  I’m ready to start thinking about things other than cancer.