So, you're probably wondering how I've been faring. Well, I'll tell ya.
My intestines are still healing After a couple of months after the surgery I was beginning to worry that things weren't going to get any better. I went to see my oncologist, who took blood tests and felt for tumors. The blood tests all came back normal and he said he couldn't feel anything. So that was good to hear. I also called Dr. Sugarbaker's office to find out from them if what I was experiencing was normal. What I was told is that what I was going through was normal. I also received an email from a guy that went through something similar and he said it took about 6 months before everything started working again.
The good news is, there is a good chance everything will start working again. The bad news, it might take another 3 months or so. So, I just have to wait it out.
On another note, I went back to my oncologist again for another blood test. This was for tumor markers, which I have to get every three months. This is the first tumor marker test since my last surgery, so here's praying everything is normla.
A NEW FEATURE: You might notice a new feature on the right hand column. I now have a guest book that you are free to leave a message in. Also, don't forget that you can also leave a comment on any particular post.
Well, that is it for now. When I get the news back from the tumor marker test, I'll post again.
Dear Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI wish there was something I could say to make the healing go faster. This part--the long grinding it out--must seem endless to you by now. All I can say is that I pray for you and think of you both--often!
I haven't experienced the likes of what you're going through. My battle was not like yours.
But I do remember lying alone in a cinder-block room, under a very large radiation machine for my umpteenth dose of the burning, poisonous rays that eventually (they said chipperly) were going to cure me.
I'd prepared myself to be brave and cheerful during the initial bout--the testing, staging, surgery and immediate aftermath--however it went. But I had not been prepared emotionally for what came later: the weakness, the pain, the fatigue, the confusion; feeling like I was 90 when I was just in my 30s.
I felt that the parade of life was going on somewhere and it was all about to pass me by. I felt that I had been neutralized; that anything I'd been put on earth to accomplish was drifting away from me and there was not a thing I could do to stop it.
And then there was the guilt: I was taking my treatments as an out-patient. Interspersed with my moments of discouragement (okay, maybe self-pity!), the daily treatments also invariably brought encounters with longer-term in-patients--those far sicker than I.
When I pulled myself together every afternoon to leave and go back to something that (at least superficially) resembled my normal life, I would glance over my shoulder at some of my fellow patients who in all likelihood would never walk out that door. I felt like a heel every time.
Then I took a deep breath, hit the elevator button and left as quickly as I could. To go back to my half-life and the self-reproach over wanting it all to be back the way it was before.
Esther