Welcome to segment three of my journey into cancerland...a journey I didn't want to ever take, but alas, here I am.
In the first two segments I relayed the "kick in the gut" feeling you get when the word comes that you have an aggressive Adenocarcinoma growing off your pancreas. I did not put in how scary such a thing is and for some alpha types how utterly inconceivable such a thing is...Alphas take news of something invading them without permission quite badly...it forces them to grow up and mature suddenly, and I do mean like right quick like. For the more reflective among us, you ask silly questions of you oncologist as to whether you should get a tattoo that says, "Momento Mori," and other grimly black humor ditties. But the worst is remembering what Toulouse-Latrec said upon learning that he had the pox...He felt "something real" had finally happened to him. In a way you are like Latrec, in the age of artifice and guile, cancer is something really real, and it is happening to YOU!
The next touching thing about cancer, is how "military" it seems to you...everything seems to be "hurry up and wait!" You see the surgeons that will try to remove this tumor that is pumping its poisons into you ad it becomes a waiting game. But when the day it comes, hold onto your hat, things will get wild for awhile, let's jump.
I went in at about 9:30 AM on the 14th, and did not come out of it until 5AM the next day.
Man what an awakening! You have a Jackson-Pratt tube coming out of your left side, and if you move too much it hurts. Then, you discover that you have a Foley type catheter installed and if somehow the tube gets pulled it hurts. But all pales before the nasal-gastric tube put in through your nose...what a contraption! It pumps out your stomach and is stuck to your nose via a cloth style adhesive tape and mastic that comes in a small package. The mastic has a strong smell and the tape tends to stick to you and can leave quite an abrasion-like wound on your nose. Oh there is the oxygen, and the pick that is in your jugular that you ll but want to kiss the doctor for, as it keeps the vampires at bay. When you have a pick point they can draw all the blood they want without a single needle poke...a great thing indeed. Then you have the medications and the morphine that is being fed to you in small amounts. All of this fed into the pick point. Then the heart monitor and the other IV and points to pump stuff into you and keep track of operations. Your pump/IV tower looks like a Christmas tree and the pump has the astonishing ability to limit your sleep to 2 hours after which an annoying alarm goes off that in your condition you swear could raise the dead.
Then things get a little unusual...Since I'd lost about 50% of my stomach, I didn't feel so hungry as empty. I would get nothing to eat except "Canada Soup" i.e. ice water, for the next 7 days! All nutrient was via IV. At least until day 5 when my sugar went low and they gave me this cloyingly sweet dextrose that you could literally feel going through you, your whole body feels "happy" for lack of better words. It wasn't long before the chicken broth finally arrived. Then a reverse process takes hold
The hand artery based heart monitor system is removed and you get a battery unit and the morphone/mophine pump is changed to Fentenyl which a whole lot nicer in terms of not causing nausea. Morphine is strong but causes terrible nausea for me...I was sure glad to get off from it. There was also a morphone mixed with something that had a huge name and losing that was alright too. It becomes a step-by-step process of losing things that limit you getting up and moving around. Losing the catheter was not so much fun...getting up to use a 1 liter urinal jug is a PIA! At least at first as you still smart a bit from the incision...even though your staples look like the zipper on a Carharrt Jacket.
The Fentenyl goes, replaced by Vicodin...So Dr. House starts his day with a handful of Vicodin, really? How would that man be standing! It knocked me flat. But each day you get stronger, less spaced out, and you lose more and more, and that means you are getting closer and closer to going home.
Everyone I came in contact with at the hospital and with the surgury team was first rate. I can't complain. Then the day comes they pull the staples and put on Steri-Strips and remove the Jackson-Pratt drain. Within two more days, I was released.
You can forget about exuberance...you are still really LOGY from the drugs and the hospital and you are going to be taking Oxy's for awhile Wher your hand/artery heart monitor was your fingers may tingle for some time after the system is removed. Your best friend is still your belly band that is just a great guard against accidental impacts.
Your reovery will be slow and step by step. Cancer really changes your outlook and what seemed so important once no longer seems so urgent at all. You will still be spacey/stoned for awhile and sleep is something you will have to do. But you have survived the surgury. Now comes the follow ons like Chemo and Radiation.
The tumor is gone and it looks like I might make it through this ordeal. I am not fully out of the woods, but each day seems a little better. As I heal up and get stronger I will write another diary about how things are going.
When they tell you that you have an operable tumor, get that sonofabitch out of you. No time for alpha male silliness or "I am in charge!" tough guy bullshit...get that thing out of you...yeah, initial recovery is going to suck a lot...but it sure beats the alternative!
Thanks to those who have read these diaries. You can survive cancer, but it all starts with you.