Surgery is Over - Now Let the Healing Commence

I’m home. Hallelujah. After sleeping on plastic sheeted hospital beds, being woken up every couple of hours, it’s good to be in my own bed.

As you saw from Stacia’s postings, the good news was that I was able to have surgery on July 28th. They took a look around and determined that the cancer had not spread extensively throughout my body and that it made sense to go at it surgically. What was originally supposed to be a 2 hour surgery, ended up lasting more than 6 hours. My left thigh is still numb but they say that the feeling will come back.

The surgeons were very pleased with the surgery. They said that they believed that they got good margins on the cancer. They did have to leave one tiny piece of cancer on my bladder. They did not want to operate on my bladder since it is so thin – the risk was too great that they would injure it. Therefore, the plan is to radiate that piece of cancer.

The bag. Yes – I came home with a temporary bag. As you can imagine, I was devastated, until I learned from my surgeon’s physician assistant that it was a miracle that I didn’t have a permanent bag. Apparently, any other surgeon would have put a permanent bag on me due to the complexity of my surgery. However, Dr. Shelton, knowing how much it meant to me to not have a bag, spent a very long time in surgery working on my colon to avoid a permanent bag. Once I heard how fortunate I was from the PA, my attitude shifted dramatically and I am now incredibly grateful for the skilled work of Dr. Shelton. The plan is to reverse this situation in 2-3 months (of course, I’m pushing to make it closer to 2 months).

So what happens next? I will be removing my staples this Friday down at Stanford and then have an appointment with Dr. Fisher next Tuesday to hear his recommendation for further treatment. While I was in the hospital, he came by and said that he was considering just doing radiation without chemotherapy. Although it sounds wonderful not to go through chemo again, I’ve decided that if chemo has the best shot at getting rid of the cancer permanently – then blast the hell out of me with chemo. I’d rather have a rough year, than go through this again.

I have also scheduled a second opinion with the Block Center in Chicago (an integrative cancer treatment facility), Dr. Tony Reid at UCSD, Dr. Heinz Lenz at USC and an oncologist at Johns Hopkins. I am also considering going to UCSF for their review. I am going to make Dr. Fisher crazy with all these opinions – but I’ve decided that I want to get as many great minds looking at my case as possible. I think he’ll be ok – although the last time I met with him he told me that I knew too much.

While I was in surgery, we also arranged for samples of my tumor be sent for state of the art molecular and chemotherapy testing. We should be getting back those results next week. I am hopeful that this information will be helpful in determining the best course of treatment for me going forward.

This has been a very rough couple of weeks. I struggle both physically and mentally every day. But, I recognize that for a person to heal physically, that it is critical to stay upbeat and hopeful. So – every time that I begin to go to a dark place, I say to myself “NO! Stop That!” I feel a little crazy – but it seems to work to realign my head.

So now it is time to rest. Thank you all for your outpouring of love. Your strength is bolstering my resolve to heal and rid myself of this terrible disease forever.