The Colon Club

CT scan 9/25 help me interpret this:

Conventional branching of left and right hepatic arteries from proper hepatic artery. No accessory hepatic arteries or anatomic variants.
Heterogeneous nodular liver with multiple LOW DENSITY hepatic lesions.

I mean i know its good news but no one really explained the medical mumbo jumbo.

2 weeks out from surgery, cue the Ensure Enlive regimen. Hubby is turning his nose up at the smell, which honestly doesn't smell that bad but then again I drink a slim fast at lunch for work.

Upon "Ensure" day he finally sat down to go through the hospital book and GI surgery prep, pre, and post booklet i think made him more nervous.

The good lord has seen to it that I’ve forgotten most of the worst parts of my surgeries and recovery, like no memory at all. My wife counts this as a blessing, I think she might be correct. As far as the jungle gym, I used to be one as well but now I’m a bit too fragile, too many things on my body that cannot be disturbed. Everyone is different though, good luck!

Hi Mohrfamily, I know I’m probably a bit weird in this regard, but I just want to give an alternative view for what it’s worth. I’ve been at this thing for just on a year now, and surgeries are easily my preferred part. I’ve had a liver resection, a low anterior resection with ileostomy, and am lining up for my second (and hopefully final!) liver resection and stoma reversal in a couple of months.

Now when I say “preferred” I don’t mean that I enjoy them, but compared to chemo or radiotherapy they have been a breeze. I have also been very fortunate to have had quick recoveries without complications, which I know not everyone does (and I don’t want to be insensitive to this).

The most important thing for me is that if all goes well - you have surgery, it hurts a bit, they give you good painkillers, you have lots of nice people taking care of you, then every day is a little bit better than the last. Every day you get more strength, more energy, a bit less pain, a bit more mobility. Yes there’s definitely tough periods, but within a couple of weeks of both my procedures I felt pretty human again. You also have a LOT of say over your own recovery efforts and can really feel empowered to heal well. I’ve made a minor study of this now and always happy to share notes . Compared to the unpredictable rollercoaster of chemo, or the tedious weeks of radiation, I’ll take surgery anyday. And most importantly - it removes a HUGE proportion of cancer in one fell swoop! As they say, there’s no cancer that can resist cold steel. And as others have said, whenever I get nervous, I just remind myself how grateful and fortunate I am to have a surgical option (twice...).

Anyway, call me mad (perhaps we all are a little down here), but I just wanted to put this out there. Best of luck to you guys, I’m sure you’ve got this.

Rob

I agree with Rob. I'm having a lot more pain from Keytruda side effects than I did from surgery. And when I had surgery, I was able to take good drugs to actually kill the pain, whereas now I cannot because there is no obvious and expected course of improvement in the base condition creating the pain. I can't stay on prednisone, either. Intervention such as steroid injection in the joint has not worked beyond a couple of days.

Give me surgery.

Getting closer! How's he doing? How are you handling all off this?

Well to be honest hes trying his best to be more positive.

1of the 2 surgeons has an out of town conference next week that hadbeen forgotten but the 2nd sent a reminder tiday for surgery. So i don't honestly know what's going on.

New surgery date 11/12 my husband is having anxiety over not having chemo for so long and I think it's causing him stress pains.

I'm so ready for surgery day to bed here!

Well hell. Did you guys at least go trick or treating?

Yes, he and our 8 year old dressed like military skull face people our 5 year old was tinkerbell