Lisa and I are list-makers. We have our own Wiki of To Do Lists of wedding tasks, home improvements, places to visit/things to do. Terribly geeky, but awfully useful. Thursday night we made a list of questions for the preoperative meeting. We’d assumed that on Friday we would be talking to the surgeon and get the answers to vital questions: how long I’d be in the hospital, how long the recovery would take, what the dietary restrictions would be, and so on for a number of pages. The surgery was in 12 days and we needed figure out what to tell our companies regarding time off, backfilling our roles, and so much more.
But this wasn’t that meeting. This was a chat with the anesthesiologist and hospital admission folks. And yet another round of blood tests, plus an EKG. Nice folks, but we needed some answers. They came later that afternoon. The surgical oncologist – the toughest of the three – called and I was able to pepper her with questions. Everything seemed reasonable, aside from the ridiculous suggestion that I don’t work for 6-8 weeks after I get home. Two weeks, sure. Two months? I work from home already.
When I got to the questions about the ileostomy, she dropped a bomb of her own. She wasn’t planning on giving me an ileostomy unless the surgery went less than really well. She was going to draw it up on my torso, just in case, but was giving me about a 10% chance of needing the bag. The risk is possibility of suture leakage, but reversing it later had the same sort of risk. With no radiation in the mix, the percentages were heavily in my favor.
Long-term game plan V (best case scenario):
- Surgery to remove the tumor on 3/24.
- Recovery.
Long-term game plan V (worst case scenario):
- Surgery to remove the tumor on 3/24.
- Ileostomy and “bag” for 3 months.
- Reversal of ileostomy and recovery.
- Discovery of lymph nodes being affected.
- Post-surgery adjuvant treatment of radiation and chemo.