SURGERY DATE SCHEDULED!

Still catching up...

September 6, 2015.....I'll have my "diverting ileostomy reversal" surgery on September 16, 2015.  I saw my surgeon, Dr. Strobos, a couple weeks ago for a pre-surgery visit and asked what the surgery would be like.  It's only supposed to be an hour to an hour-and-a-half long.  And I should only be in the hospital about 3-4 days.  Then he said, "I'm just gonna go in where your stoma is, plunk it back in there, and then sew you up.  It's pretty simple."

Oh I couldn't just let that go, I had to tease.  I gave him a quizzical look and said, "Really?  You're just gonna plunk it back in?  Is that a medical term?   Because I've seen your training videos and normally you use bigger words than that."  He laughed.

He said, "Well ok, it's a little more complicated than that," and he explained in more medical terminology and detail what he would be doing.  Then he realized what I'd said and he looked stunned and said, "You've really watched my training videos?"  I told him, "Yeah, I'm really dorky that way.  I didn't have a clue what you were doing in them."

Oh, and he wasn't joking when he said, "You're gonna want to buy some Depends.  Really.  Trust me.  You're going to have diarrhea and it's going to leak and there's not going to be anything you can do about it."  Oh God, I was so hoping he was kidding me.  But he wasn't.  So, for about two weeks after I leave the hospital I'll have to deal with that.

I'm so afraid of having pain in my colon after my surgery and with food going through there again. I'm afraid of my rectum hurting too trying to push.

All year it was hard enough dealing with the mucus in my colon getting hard and dry.  Those Fleet home enemas helped but did they ever cause me pain!

My surgeon did a flexible sigmoidoscopy in the office to see if anything looked strange.  It looked ok.  Then he sent me to the hospital for a gastrografin enema so he could have a really good look.  Ugh.  I had one in February and that one was painful enough.

This one was excruciating!  He warned me that after nearly a year of non-use my colon had atrophied a little and had some colitis.  The contrast hitting my colon during the enema caused me intense spasms and I couldn't help crying from the pain.

All I knew was that I was in excruciating pain.  It was bad enough feeling the pressure of the water, but my entire colon felt like it was going to explode.  I tried so hard not to cry but I couldn't help it.  The good news is that everything looked fine.  The bad news (for me) is that I'm terrified of how my colon is going to react after surgery.

I hate pain.  I really, really hate pain.

Oh, and he said he'll take my chest port out during my surgery.  I'll be so happy to have that gone.