First, I will apologize for the last blog post. I was not doing well at the hospital. I was completely honest though. I do not do well at the hospital and do not like nurses trying to force strong opiates down my throat.

I am home now. My white blood cell count dropped from 19 yesterday to 11.5 today. It is still high, but hopefully rest and antibiotics will get it to normal. Antibiotics are the only drugs I went home with. The pain is not terrible. I have had worse pain. Moving is still difficult. The first thing I did when I got home, after petting my dogs, was to take a shower. I was exhausted after the shower. The exhaustion was a combination of my body healing, my body compensating for the wounds, and the fact that you cannot any quality sleep in the hospital.

There was a sign on the wall of every hospital room, and I actually think it was a sign per hospital bed. The sign had text about how they wanted you and your family to rest comfortably. I got zero rest. I do not blame the nurses or other hospital staff. They have a job to do which is why every time they came in my room I would quiet whatever I was watching and do whatever they needed me to do. My biggest problem is the timing of things. I did not have a gap longer than an hour and a half where no one was coming into my room. Many times they were coming into to give me a shot, draw bllod, or move my IV, and I am appreciative for all of it. I just wish there was a way to give patients more time for rest. I was there Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. I might have slept a total of 6 hours. I have always heard that rest, and most importantly sleep, is crucial to recovery, yet I could not get any. Again, I understand why I didn't get rest and sleep,but I wish a new approach could be found. I am not even going to mention how uncomfortable the beds and chairs are.

Ok, now I will cover a little more about what was done and what is next. I will get into some not-so-pretty details so if if that is not your thing, stop reading now. I am posting everything, including the nasty stuff, because people think they are alone in this and they are not. My first couple blog posts about this had a few people reach out to me. Some said they felt alone and they were glad I was opening up about this. One thing they all had in common was their support, even if they didn't personally know me.

Last chance to click away...

I had a pre-surgery doctor's appointment 2 days before the surgery. He went over what he would be doing. He politely called me fat, about 10 to 15 different times during the appointment. He apologized each and every time. I actually laughed the last time. He was not being rude. He had to be honest. Due to being overweight the surgery was going to be slightly more difficult. It meant he would need to make an incision for his hand to assist in the operation. This means I have some normal laparascopic incisions and a larger incision where his hand assisted. My larger size also meant it would be more difficult to get the stoma through my abdomen. Yes, I have a stoma. I have am ileostomy. A loop ileostomy to be more precise. This is not permanent. I will need to have another surgery in approximately 6 weeks to reverse the ileostomy. I have it to allow time for my colon to heal. The surgeon told us there were some difficulties during the surgery. I had a 2.5 inch tumor, but he removed 14 inches of my colon. Tjey actually brought in an oncologogist or oncology surgeon or something like that to help them identify all of the edges so that if the tumor is indeed cancer, it was all removed. Better than safe than sorry I say. You may think 14 inches is a lot, and it is, but we have approximately 20+ feet of colon so it is not as bad as it sounds. I mentioned the laparascopic incisions, which there are 2 or 3, and I mentioned the incision for his hand. I also have stoma, which, if you don't know, is literally your intestines sticking out of your body. I have one more hole and that was for a JP drain. I Googled it to find out exactly how it worked and what it was for. A tube on one end and a bulb on the other. The tube goes into your body. The bulb stays on the outside. The bulb has a drainage hole with a lid. Nurses would drain the bulb and then compress the bulb before putting the lid on it. I wondered why they did this so I researched. It is a very simple concept. The bulb will try to decompress and create a suction effect. This suction would draw out blood and other fluids from the surgical area. I had this tube removed today. It did not hurt, but felt very weird. I also had a Foley catheter for a couple of days, but that is normal. This is another thing that was not necessarily painful to have removed, but definitely not pleasant. I had to drop all notions of modesty and decency for this surgery. Nurses and nursing assistants would clean the catheter area, they would clean and bandage my incisions, and they also had to empty my ostomy bag. I literally apologized every single time I had to ask them to empty it. They do it all day, every day, but I do not so it was quite embarrassing and disgusting to me.

So what is next? Next I will go see the surgeon in 5 days so he can remove the staples from the incisions. He will also remove the bridge from the stoma. What is a stoma bridge you ask? Apparently it is a metal rod through the stoma to make sure it does not sink into my abdomen. If it sank into the abdomen that would be very bad. Once that is done I will continue healing and in approximately 6 weeks I will have some scans to see how well the internal healing is going and if my body is ready for the ostomy reversal. My body may be ready at that time, but I do not think my mind will ever be ready for another surgery. I will need to meet with an oncologogist, but since the entire tumor was removed I should not need to have any additional cancer treatment.

I will probably keep this blog updated throughout my recovery. If you made it this far, I thank you for reading. It was, and is gross, but it is something people go through every day and I want them to know they are not alone. If you have a change in bowel habits or have bleeding while emptying your bowel, please see a doctor. It is not something that you should just see if it goes away. I brought it up to a doctor 3 or 4 years ago and at every appointment after that. He didn't think it was anything that needed further investigation. I got a new doctor this year and he immediately sent me to a specialist and that is how I ended up here.