Life's Journey

Where to begin...  I guess I'll start with Monday.  The fancy pants robotic laproscopic surgery went well on Monday - no complications.  Everyone at the Mayo Hospital is very friendly and I am grateful to Dr. Borst (my Oncologist) for connecting me with them.  I was able to see the Da Vinci Robot machiene when they took me into the surgery room before they knocked me out.  It was quite impressive.  I found a You Tube video that shows how it works, Click here if your interested.  Pretty cool stuff.  And I knew I was in good hands with Dr. Magrina at Mayo - he's one of the world's best at using this robot.  I was knocked out pretty fast and before I knew it I was waking up in recovery. 

Roy later told me the procedure took about two and half hours (which was the blink of an eye to me).  Waking up in recovery was fairly easy.  They have very quiet and peaceful recovery rooms and the nurse assigned to me was super nice.  I was in some pain and feeling some nausea so she quickly gave me extra meds.  She checked in often asking how I was and supplementing my meds as needed.  I was dozing in and out of conciousness but did realize that this wasn't the intense pain I was used to waking up with after surgery.   As I became more alert I realized I had 2 IV lines and a band aid from another IV attempt - placing an IV on me is tough because all that I've been through.  I still am not completely clear on why they added another line, but they felt it was necessary.  I now have 3 IV wounds and lots of bruises - but honestly it's the least of my worries.  After a couple hours of recovery time the nurse helped me get dressed and brought Roy in.  She went over all the discharge instructions, incision care, medications, etc and asked him to pull the car around...  holy crap!  I was going home!  I knew this was potentially an option, but whoa!  I was actually going home after this surgery.... 

I remember looking at my belly on the drive home, it was super swollen and I have 4 little incisions (about an inch each) - 2 on each side of my belly button.  And my belly button was packed and covered with tape.  Yup, and EW!  They went through my belly button!!!  Uck - it still makes me weak at the knees to think about it...  But, that was it...  tiny incisions.  Totally different than any of my previous surgeries.  We got home and I fell asleep pretty quick in "big red" with Ben at my feet.  (FYI, "big red" is an ugly maroon colored recliner that came with Roy, but it's perfect for surgery recovery - in fact I'm sitting in it right now ). 

Later that night Roy and I talked about the procedure and he told me Dr. Magrina came out after the surgery and talked to him about the findings.  It was not what we were hoping for...  he found more metastatic disease than we anticipated.  This means the big surgery (pelvic exenteration) is not an option for me.  I had my follow up with the doctor today and he gave us some additional information.  He biopsied 8 spots during the surgery from various areas of concern in the pelvis area.  All 8 came back as adenocarcinoma (this is the same cancer I've been fighting for 4 years).  While all the cancer is contained to the pelvis area it is more widely spread than we expected - this is why surgery is no longer an option.  He also performed a cell wash - the results of this tell us that there are cancer cells floating in this area as well.  Surgery can't remove what we can't see and would be fruitless at this point.  The only option at this stage is chemotherapy.  He has sent the biopsies off for additional testing that should help us identify or create a chemo cocktail that will best fight my cancer.  He is scheduling me with the top Mayo Chemo Specialist - I am waiting on a call to know when I can get in with her.  This is when I will find out answers to all the chemo related questions you're asking right now - when, where, how much, how often, how effective, etc.  I don't have any of these answers right now.  I'm not sure if I'm more scared not knowing or to find out more about what this means?

I am continuing to rest and recover from Monday's surgery.  I'm told it takes about 2 weeks for total recovery.  The pain from the CO2 gas they filled my abdomen with has been the worst so far...  It makes it hard to breath and travels up my shoulders and back - ouch!  Slowly it's getting better.  The incisions are healing well - the belly button one is just gross, painful and well just gross - so I won't talk about it.    Bending is a challenge and pants are out of the question.  I'm getting around ok... but have been super grateful to have Roy's help.  I'm taking stuff for pain, nausea, antibiotics, and anxiety.  Still pretty sleepy, but it's been good to catch up on movies and my "crap" shows that Roy hates to watch

Just taking things one day at a time...  more to come.