Christmas Colonoscopy

I had my first PET scan today.  For those that do not know, a PET scan is performed by taking an x-ray type image of your dog to determine if she too has cancer.  Unfortunately, the prognosis for fluffy is really quite negative.

Actually, a PET Scan, as I understand it, is a scan more accurate than the CT Scan to look for other possible cancer areas in your body from head to toe.  When you go in the tech will inject glucose with a radioactive isotope into your body.  This sounds more ominous than it is.  Basically just an injection and you don’t really feel anything different.  Then you hang out for a while for the glucose to work its way through the system.  After that you lay on the table and get passed back and forth through the donut like a CT or MRI.  The prep takes about an hour and the scan takes about 30 minutes.

As I understand the science behind this, cancer cells suck up the glucose.  The glucose has radioactive material in it.  So, when cancer cells suck up this material it will light up an cancer areas on the image.

I should have results early next week and will share the fun with you when I do.

Most of my reader (yes singular) think the purpose of this blog is to simply whine and be a wise ass.  In reality, I hope that some time down the road someone else faced with similar circumstances will peruse the archives, get a laugh, but also get some kind of out look on what to expect.

So, I got the chemo port installed today via outpatient surgery.  Its a disc about as big around as a quarter.  The idea is that they install this device to make hooking up for chemo more convenient.  It is my understanding that repeated chemo beats up the veins in the arm a bit if you do that repeatedly.  The surgery is quite simple. You go in like any other surgery, go through the motions, they knock you out (a.k.a. time travel), and you wake up with a small incision and fairly unnoticeable bump in your chest.  Its a little sore, but I have not really had to touch the Lortab they sent me home with.  I might have one before bed with a bottle of vodka. I’m just kidding.

They installed a “Power Port” brand port.  Apparently, the Power Port is some kind of big deal.  They send you home with the Power Port kit that includes an ID Card, Key Tab, and Rubber Bracelet that says POWER PORT.  Good job on the ID card.  I fill out my name and info and it identifies me as a member some fucking club of power port owners that get together on weekends and show off their chest lumps. Key tag? WTF?  Then you got the Lance Armstrong style bracelet except its light purple rather than yellow.  The bracelet will be cool.  I can hang out at the chemo parlor and taunt the other that have some other inferior port. “Hey old lady, I got the Power Port and the purple bracelet to prove it, so suck on it!”

Whats the deal with purple? It appears that the little gizmo they put inside you is in fact purple.  If you are going to market your product with the word “Power” then give it some balls for hells sake.  I would have expected chrome or maybe that flat black that they have been putting on the Harleys theses days.  Flames would be cool. But purple, come on guys.

“So Doc, given that I have this pimped up port, tell me what it does.” 

“Does it have some adjustments or options.” 

“No not really.” 

“So, it must go alot faster than other ports right?” 

“No, chemo is still going to take a few hours.”

“So, what makes it better than other ports?” 

“Well it is purple, and it comes with an Official ID Card, Key Tab, and cool Bracelet.”

“Ahhhhhhhh FUCK YOU!”

Listen, I’m just yanking the chain of the Power Port folks. I’m sure that it is a fine product. Learn more about it here.

It looks like the doctors are filling up the old calendar here.  I am scheduled for surgery tomorrow to have the chemo port installed.  Friday I have a PET Scan (is it true that your urine glows in the dark after?).  Then I gear up for my first chemo treatment on Tuesday with a stop off at the lab on Monday.  I’m going to be a busy boy here.

Larry H. Miller, age 64, owner of the NBA franchise Utah Jazz, passed away Friday due to complications with diabetes.  I have always been a Jazz fan.   Larry Miller was a great owner and has done alot for the NBA, the Jazz, and the State of Utah.  I didn’t always agree with decisions and I hated his politics, but I appreciated what he accomplished.  My heart was touched by Larry’s story.  He battled diabetes for a number of years.  Just a few short weeks ago he had both his legs amputated.  Apparantly he was on dialysis.  My heart goes out to Larry’s family.

My Cancer has scared the hell out of me at times.  I have known people who lost long fought battles with Cancer.  But there is no doubt about it, diabetes can be a real bastard.  I lost my Mother at the age of 51 to diabetes.  She lost her sight, her kidneys, her leg, it was one thing after another.

Hug your diabectic friends and family members.  Ask them to get their diets under control and not let diabetes kick their ass.

Go Jazz!

There really is nothing that makes you feel older than celebrating your 40th while recuperating from colon surgery.  I recently “celebrated” my 40th.  I had been out of the hospital for about 3 days.  Still lethargic, feeling some nagging pain, and can’t shit with any regularity.  Do I feel 40?  Actually I feel much older.

I started this blog as I approached 40 and had scheduled a colonoscopy around the holidays.  My thought was “nothing makes you feel old like a colonoscopy.”  Well, I topped that one as I skated into mid-life.  Let the games begin.

It’s like an episode of 24.  You wake up in a strange room and while you were sleeping they jammed something inside your penis which can be used to get information from you with the slightest tug.  You think water-boarding is effective.

I absolutely hate the catheter.  My wife says “I’ve had a catheter a number of times . . . its no big deal . . . quit you bitching cry baby.”  Yea, but she has a hole that was designed to have things jammed up there (not that I get much opportunity to test that theory).  But its just the most uncomfortable thing in the world.  The day after surgery they want to you get up and start walking.  So, you start wandering the halls carrying your bag of pee and the tubes causes your unit to slinky up and down, not in a good way, with each step.  Late at night the pee-carrying drones take walks circling the surgery ward like a scene out of Midnight Express.

Finally the joyous day comes that they can remove the catheter.  The nurse announces that it is time to remove the catheter and asks the shadowing student nurse “would you like to watch.”  Yea pull up a seat I’ll get you some fuckin popcorn.  But then the student nurse takes it up a notch and says “Can I do it?”  Are you fucking kidding me?  So, the student nurse grabs hold of the catheter and pulls like her life depends on the goddamn chute opening.

When the catheter is removed you question whether you will ever recover.  For days my penis retracted into my body like a scared turtle.  It seemed smaller, as if that was possible.  For a couple days I thought the doctor may have removed a few inches of cock and grafted it in as a substitute length of colon.  The day of the “catheter incident” there was kind of a strange fleshy bump on the bottom toward the scrotum (nut sack to you and me).  That night I embarrassingly asked my nurse  if the odd issues regarding my penis were normal to which the nurse responded “would you like me to take a look?” I know what you are thinking.  It sounds like we are well on our way to a letter to Penthouse Forums.  “I never thought it would happen to me . . .”  After the nurse conducted a thourough non-erotic examination of my penis HE said I would be just fine.

Thankfully, everything down there seems to be back to normal and I’m open for business.  Where are all the customers?  Damned economy.

I’ve previously posted that I have somewhat lost my religion.  Actually, I’m not sure I ever had it, but I like the R.E.M. song.  So, sacreligion is all I have and I am bound to offend. So, now that we are on that track, is there a Patron Saint of Flatulence?

When you are just out of surgery your doctor and the medical staff keep asking “have you passed any gas?”  They keep asking.  “Passed any gas?” “Passed any gas?” Always said with a smile of encouragement.  This is the one time in your life that you can fart at will without worrying about having a dog in the room to blame it on.  At one time the nurse was so encouraging in asking “have you passed any gas?” that I know I would have gotten a goddamned lollipop if I had answered in the affirmative.

The good news for my hospital stay is that I was passing gas almost immediately.  The bad news is that the gas was generally accompanied by gallons of fluid.  But then one late hospital night it stops.  I’m laying in bed and the gas pain is excruciating.  You sit in the cool white light of the hospital bathroom and wait for gas.  You have fresh stitching on the colon and up you abdomen.  So you don’t push and strain.  You sit and stare until the textures, specks, and color variations of the tile flooring produce images in your mind.  There is a bird, there is a wolf, there is the Ayatollah Khomeini.  You sit and hope, dare I say pray, for flatulence.  Then, you begin to hear a rumble, like a thunderous clap from the heavens, rrrrrriiipppppppp tweeeeeeet pfthttttttt! Unfortunately the sound is coming from outside the bathroom door as my father decided to stay the night on the hospital room pull out bed.  I will have to pray to fart another day.

I am sorry for the path this blog is taking.  Excrement yesterday and flatulence today.  I know its getting a little gross.  I promise you that things will become a little more classy shortly as I am working up a post about my penis.

During my hospital stay I had substances spewing from 3 different orifices in an amazing array of color.  The day after surgery the hospital staff and doctor expressed grave concerns for the lack of fluid output in the catheter until finally I said “you ought to see whats coming out the other end.”  “Are you having loose stools?” was the response.  “LOOSE, are you shitting me?”  I was dreaming of a loose stool as I sprayed water that rivaled any prior colon prep.  Ok, well lets have you shit in a cup so we can monitor that.

Here is where it gets a little gross, but lets be honest, in the name of science. I had not eaten since Wednesday and had blown that out with HalfLytely. So, post surgery, the only thing in my body was what they were pumping into my veins and those fucking ice chips they give you coming out of surgery.  So, pray tell, why am I shitting green?  Actually, it started a yellow water and shifted to green. Then it goes dark deep forest green.  I didn’t eat anything green.  Now, at that very same time, I am vomiting large volumes of brown, how the hell does that happen. They quite magically both turned a creamy mustard yellow with a smell so foul it gagged a CNA.  The “loose stool” now turns a touch brown and takes on the shape and form of a hot and sour soup from a bad Chinese restaurant.  Even my CNA commented “Dude, you been eatin chinese food?”  So Lets just say I’m looking forward to a normal bowel.

It was early Friday morning.  I wanted to stop by Denny’s for a ham and cheese omlette as I had not had solid food since Wednesday.  For some reason you always have to surgery at ungodly hours of the morning.

After stripping down, putting on the assless gown, and strapping on my ultra-traction booties the nurse informed me that she would be in shortly to shave me.  My wife says ”are they going to shave your balls?”  Why would they shave my balls?  “You should have shaved down there before we came.”  Yea, the nurse takes a peek and I have a completely shaven package, nothing strange about that.  So, shes shaving down my gut and gets toward the bottom.  To put it lightly, my gut as a little, ok a lot, of overhang.  So, you get toward the bottom of the gut and have to shave underneath it in the pubic area.  So, in comes nurse number 2 to hold my gut up while nurse number 1 shaves.  Nothing embarrassing about this.

This is getting better by the minute.

I have not posted for a while.  I went into the hospital on the 30th for a laproscopic sigmoid colectomy (they ripped a chunk of colon with a couple sharp sticks).  I am actually posting this from my hospital bed.  I should be on my way home tomorrow. I will be updating the blog shortly with my notes and thoughts of the hospital recovery.  So, I will flash back a little.

When you get the diagnosis its hard to deal with, its hard to tell people, its a little scary, especially when you are still looped up on colonoscopy anaesthesia.  I thought I was over the shock and could deal with the issue and talk openly.  Then they “Stage” your cancer.  Based upon the evidence of pathology, generally, they rate how bad the cancer is by placing it in a catagory of I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, IV, and V with I being “quit being a baby we cut the thing out” to V being “your basically fucked.”  All signs going in looked pretty good.  I am relatively young and had a clean CT scan suggesting no metastses.  I though I was going to hear I or II.  What I heard today was IIIc, 5 of 18 lymph nodes affected.  It takes the breath out of you a little just like the original diagnosis.  I know things could be worse, but I remain frightend for the future.