We have a date, and it is soon
Today's photo captured minutes after learning that June 9th, next Friday, is my surgery date. I'm calm again, for now, after an intense couple of days.
After the initial euphoria of making it to this stage, I had a couple night of doubts about whether this was what I wanted. Yes, it's the treatment for the type and stage of cancer I have, but it comes with substantial risk and high cost. But I realized that, while a healthy level of concern is desirable, these thoughts were coming from a place of denial. A place that, even after eight months of chemotherapy and countless visits with multiple oncologists, refuses to accept reality and just wants to wake up from this nightmare. One of the things I try my best to live by is believing as many true things, and not believing as many false things, as possible. It isn't always easy. Those false beliefs about my health have been put to rest. I have stage four colorectal cancer, and on June 9th we're going to do our damnedest to remedy that.
I won't know what, exactly, they're going to remove (if anything, because they could still find something inoperable on the day of), but here's a rundown of what I consented to: - cytoreductive surgery (removal of cancer in the abdominal cavity) - heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) (hot chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer cells) - omentectomy (removal of fatty tissue surrounding abdominal organs)
Also possibly the following, as necessary: - splenectomy (removal of spleen) - cholecytectomy (removal of gallbladder) - bowel restriction (removal of part of the intestine, probably including appendix) - gastric restriction (removal of part of stomach) - stoma
Whether the surgeons are successful at removing all the cancer or not, things are going to be very different. My understanding is that most people recover most of their quality of life, which is something to hope for.
From the comments
James Petrosky: I expected the appointment notification to come by email, like it usually does, so every spam message I recieved all day nearly gave me a heart attack. But then I got a 416 phone call and knew exactly what it was.
Jon: Oh, man, I hope you don't end up with a stoma. After two years of that, I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
James Petrosky Jon it's quite likely I'll end up with one for part of the recovery, but the risk of needing one perminantly is something I've given a lot of thought to over the past nine months. The risk is worth the potential years of otherwise good quality life to me.
Jon: James Petrosky quality of life is very important, I didn't think about it that way. Also, I had a particularly difficult one. Your experience will probably be different from mine.
James Petrosky: Jon for me, if I don't get this surgery, I'm stuck with chemo until I decide I don't want it anymore. All my choices are, from a bowel point of view, pretty bad. Most people end up only needing them for a month or two for this procedure, so I'm hoping for that.
James Petrosky: You know what you do immediately after getting some of the most important news in your entire life? You make the fucking bed, because laundry still needs to get done, even if you're in crisis mode about your own mortality. Because you're going to bed tonight, even though you might just staring at the ceiling fan all night. No one else is going to do it.
The experience of cancer treatment is a whole lot of things, but one of those things is all the same bullshit chores you were doing already.
James Petrosky: But you don't cook dinner, screw that, you go get some Popeye's.
Cathy: Guess who loves you
