The Colon Club

Well, just here to update. As you can see in my signature my dear mum had APR about 2 weeks ago without complications, everything was going smoothly and she started to eat. She was discharged from clinic after a week. Now she has been experiencing chills and fever, does not want to eat and some coughs. We are in clinic again so her surgeon prescribed some antibiotics and for fever. Xrays and blood tests were taken too. A bit scared. Did anyone experience this?

Nothing seems to be easy here. In some weeks she will be under chemo to avoid recurtence as she was staged t3n1 ( 3 lymph nodes cancerous out of 26 taken).

Your prayers please.

Cheers.

Hi,
I had a similar experience. 2 weeks after my apr surgery I experienced fever and chills. I returned to the hospital. Ended up admitted for another week on IV antibiotics. They did a cat scan looking for abscess which was negative. Chest X-rays also negative. They never found a source of my infection but the surgeon said if you have a fever after surgery it's something to do with the surgery. They removed my port at that time as well, just in case, though e probability of it being a cause was extremely low.
It just took time for the antibiotics and my body to fight it off. I was quite miserable during this time. I remember thinking, how much is one person supposed to take? Eventually it passed. I hope your mom feels better soon. APR is a tough recovery as it is. Wishing her all the best.

Hi Mario,

I only had a fever once a few days following my surgery. It was not fun, but it did pass after a few hrs, and my bowels started gurgling. Was passing gas within 24 hrs. This is major surgery and sometimes, our bodies are happy about this surgery. Hopefully it will pass and she will be fine.

Thinking of you both,

Lee

P.S. Any chance she has the flu?

Not sure about fever & chills. I think he had both. But he definatley had a yellowish drainage from his incision. It took a month after surgery but pain & drainage showed up. As soon as I saw it we got onto the drs. Didn't want to end up with a wound vac & a years worth of infection. After the first round of antibiotics, there was still some drainage & pain coming back so he ended up on another antibiotic. Then onto chemo. I'm pretty sure he started on time

Thanks to everyone. Your prayers are welcome.

At present It seems she is responding well to a mixture of antibiotics. Still in hospital fever was gradually decreasing after trying diff antibiotics and blood transfusion as the infection lasted a bit more. According to scans and xrays no abcess, but problems in her kidneys and bladder. Probably post surgery complications are common for major surgeries. Now she needs to recover well before adjuvant chemotherapy.

I have another question: how long is it approx between surgery and adjuvant therapy? I mean standard for stage 3 RC with nodes involved as you can see in my signature. I would appreciate your responses.

Regards.

mtipte wrote:I have another question: how long is it approx between surgery and adjuvant therapy? I mean standard for stage 3 RC with nodes involved as you can see in my signature. I would appreciate your responses.

Regards.

I'm not sure about the standard wait time, but for me it was 6 weeks. Also, I was given FOLFOX but no Avastin because of perineal wound healing complications.

Thanks! My mum has just been discharged and finally at home! Doctors here don't know anything about curcumin or pipperine lol .

Now in her scan it seemed to be a subpleural node with a residual aspect. We got scared as this didn't show up in previous xrays or pre surgery scans. The surgeon says there's nothing to worry about as it's normally a scar from a past infection. The CT also showed minimal pleural effusion and docs assured it was because of the surgery.

Now waiting for her adjuvant treatment. She tolerates Xeloda quite well and I hope her onc will prescribe just monotherapy since I've read it's quite the same as using FOLFOX.

Any advice?

Thanks.