Scared of surgery in need of wisdom...

[Mohrfamily]

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.

[Mohrfamily]

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.

[Pyro]

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!

[Rock_Robster]

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

[boxhill]

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.

[AmyG]

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

[Mohrfamily]

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.

[Mohrfamily]

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!

[AmyG]

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

[Mohrfamily]

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