SURGERY DONE.... OUT OF HOSPITAL

Good you are home!
Welcome home, Jennie!!! Now... a bit of advice... your #1 job for the next 6 weeks or so is to rest, rest, rest... and when you are not resting, walk, walk, walk. Even if it just means walking around the house/apartment... keep moving. In the next week you are going to start feeling a whole bunch better and less painful. You are going to be bored because you haven't been able to do anything for the last couple of weeks. But this is really, really important!! Do NOT start lifting or doing anything that requires lifting!! Even though you are going to be feeling better, you are still healing from the inside out and if you start lifting things, changing the bed, etc... I can guarantee you will end up with a hernia Been there, done that and have heard of a lot of others where this has happened too. But if you avoid doing the lifting and being too active too soon... you will do fine.

Now... you ask if anyone has had the abdomen involved. :::raising hand::: I have Like you, my tumour was quite large and it had perforated through the intestinal wall... and then an abscess formed around it. That abscess was attached to the tumour as well as the abdominal wall. My surgeon managed to remove the whole tumour as well, had to take out the abscess layer by layer. The abscess also indicated that it had cancer cells in it (makes sense since it surrounded the tumour)... so my surgeon placed little metal clips around the area where the abscess was attached to the abdomen wall. He knew that I would be needing chemo and radiation, but without the clips showing which part of the abdominal wall to zap, the radiologist wouldn't be able to do the radiation. Radiation is focused on a particular spot... hence the clips to show exactly where that spot would be.

Like you, my surgeon said the tumour would have been in me and growing for at least 10 years prior to it being detected!! That means, I would have been 40-41 yrs old or earlier when it started... but at that age, I don't think I even knew what a colonoscopy was, let alone would ever have thought to ask for one. I had ZERO symptoms up until 6 months before I was diagnosed and those symptoms just involved a pain/stitch in my left side. All blood/urine/poop/ultrasound tests came back totally normal... no sign of infection or anything to indicate there might be a problem.

Now... for the good news... even though I had a heck of a surgery to remove the tumour and 18 inches of colon/intestine, then had 8 months of chemo and 6 weeks of daily radiation... I came through just fine and am as active as I ever was, enjoying life and all my various hobbies. Oh sure, I did have a recurrence in my adrenal gland and there are spots in my lungs (which we are dealing with). This did involve another surgery to remove the adrenal gland... and time will tell what treatments I'll need if the nodules in the lungs start growing... but all the trauma of the surgeries and chemo/rad treatments have not slowed me down

But I can't stress enough for you to rest, rest, rest and walk, walk, walk. Walking should be the most you do for the next 5-6 weeks... there will be plenty of time to do everything else after that time. Give your body plenty of support and permission to just heal

Huggggggs,

Cheryl

idlehunters said:

Adrenal Gland ... spots in lungs????
Hi Cheryl,
First of all let me say I was quite blown away at the pic you now have posted. You look just like my sister!! Second, thank u for rest/walk advice. I cried when I read your post out loud to my husband. It made feel hopeful. I have gone through so many roller costers of emotions since this all started. In hospital I kept thinking people were lying to me and I was going to die. It got quite bad. Since our cases seems so much alike is adrenal glands and lung spots something I need to be on top of or was this just something that affected you? I know we are all different. I just didn't know if those areas tie into my afflicted areas. You mentioned little metal clips.... my doc also did that. Stay in touch.

Jennie

Naaaaaa....
Now Jennie... there is absolutely no need to worry about possible problems in the future. Adrenal glands are not a common place for colon cancer to spread, but if you look at the big picture, if there are cancer cells roaming around in your body, there's no law saying they can't stop and take root anywhere they want Cancer cells that move through the blood or lymph system (which is how they travel) can do one of two things... they can die a natural death before stopping anywhere, or they can stop and set up home somewhere. Of course, at the cell level, they are impossible to find because cells are so tiny there is no machine on this earth that can detect them.

But that is the whole reason why, after you have healed from surgery, you will more than likely be started on chemo... just like all the rest of us did. You will be given the standard protocol of treatment and the plan will be for 12 treatments. The whole purpose for this chemo is that chemo is systemic. It travels through your blood system and lymph system, just like cancer... and it kills everything in it's path. The good cells as well as the bad cancer cells. When it kills the good cells, that is when you have side affects and just feel yucky... but the good news is the good cells will regenerate and grow new ones... whereas any cancer cells it kills will just plain die and not regenerate (yayayaya). SOMETIMES, and this doesn't happen with everyone, a couple of bad cancer cells will survive the chemo... or, they had already settled in and taken root and are resistant to the chemo. That, unfortunately is what happens when we find we have a recurrence... the cancer cells or baby tumours were resistant to the chemo. And that is why (and I'm really getting ahead of myself now) oncologists won't put you back on the same chemo you have already been on since the cancer cells survived it... they will try another kind.

But you are NOT to even think about what if the cancer comes back in a year, in 2 years, in 3 years. If you focus on the possible bad stuff that COULD happen but is not guaranteed to happen... well, remember the saying "Be careful what you think"? You keep sending those thoughts out there and the universe will think that's what you want.. yikes! So you just work on the here and now.

Right now you have to pamper yourself and get healed from the surgery... then when you get to the next step which will be the chemo, your body will be healthy again and you will now pamper yourself to get through the chemo with as few side affects as possible. You might detect a pattern here... it's all about pampering yourself, being good to yourself, and feeding yourself good, healthy food choices so your immune system can also be built up and prepared for battle

Radiation will probably happen sometime in the middle of your chemo treatments. My onlcologist put me on the pill form of 5FU when I was getting my radiation... more for convenience I think than anything else. Since I was going to the Cancer Agency every day for the radiation, it was easier for me to take the pills than also have to deal with having the pump for 3 days and the 3 hours spent getting infused on the first day. But that will be up to your oncologist as to what happens during radiation with the chemo.

If we try to discuss the whole time period in one or two notes, it'll be overwhelming... when in fact, if you just deal with one thing at a time, it's definitely doable.

So right now, you know there will be more treatments... but don't even think about them right now. There will be plenty of time to ask questions when we get closer to it... right now, it's all about you and getting you healthy... and avoiding the d*mn hernia!!

Hugggggs,

Cheryl

glad you're home and recovering
Hi Jennie,

Welcome to the board! I'm glad you're home and recovering. As you're already realizing, it won't be an easy ordeal, but you've got the surgery part over, and now you're on to the recovering and healing part of it. Yes, as much as going through chemo may worry and/or frighten you, you will come through it fine, and you SHOULD get it done! I never ended up having the colorectal surgery because my tumor went away with radiation, but I did have a liver resection (mine had already spread to liver and lungs when I was diagnosed). I now know that my oncologist should have put me on post surgical chemo (called adjuvant chemotherapy), but he didn't. I didn't know enough to request (I was glad at the time that I didn't "need" it). Then, four months after surgery, I had a recurrence in my lungs & needed to do 7 more months of chemo. I can't help but think that maybe that would have all been avoided if I had the chemo right after surgery. So, DO go with post surgical chemo because there could be cancerous cells floating around in you (which might not show up on a scan- there needs to be a very large number of cells clumped together to show up on a CT or PET scan). This is not to scare or worry you (sorry if it did), but just to let you know the importance of following up surgery with chemo. The people on this board can talk you through chemo and give you lots of insight to the different types, what to expect, etc.

Right now, just focus on healing, with plenty of resting and walking when you can.
God bless you- you take care!

Lisa