Men

Let the music play on, play on, play on …

What is that? I think it’s a Lionel Richie song. Anyway —

They moved it up, and we have a surgery date. July 2! Truth is, I’m getting much worse, sick (to some degree) all day every day.

I am absolutely thrilled. This will end a year and a half of pain and nausea, and other things best not mentioned in mixed company. I haven’t eaten solid food in a year, or been to a movie, or gone anywhere much at all.

They’re re-routing my lower guts, and also taking out a small tumor. This stomach/GI syndrome forces you to live minute by minute. Yesterday, I felt kind of okay, and then threw up in a cup while driving on a winding mountain road. Thank God I had an empty cup in the car!

Although I have to say, the pre-surgery rigmarole, pre-visits, paperwork, phone calls, and prodding is unbelievable. If someone were elderly or just not-that-with-it, I don’t know how they would get it done.

I really am thinking positively though. I have already made a list of all my favorite restaurants and foods. You can’t imagine how happy it will make me when I can have a Pizza Hut pan pizza or Pad Thai!

I also just started the germination of a London trip. October is my usual month. It’ll be a good project for the next few months. I want to visit and photograph every ancient church within The City of London. (Not “Greater London.” That’s gigantic.) The actual City is very small, inside the ancient Roman & medieval city walls. I think there are about fifty churches.

In passing — you know how much of a Dickens fan I am. My addendum to that would be except Martin Chuzzlewit. Just started trying to get into it. Jeez. I really dislike it.

So, that’s what’s going on here. Hope you’re all well!

Well, friends. I’ve known for a few months but we’re just really getting started now. I have a tumor … again.

It’s small and near to where the first one was. I tend to be a do it or don’t person. This type of cancer is known for coming back near the same site again and again. I’m telling ya, get the colonoscopy. Patients are getting much younger. Patients age 41 to 50 tied my age group, and ages 31 to 40 are catching up very quickly.

Get the test. You’re asleep the whole time and you don’t notice a thing. If you don’t like the thought of something being stuck up your butt, believe me, if you get this disease, you’re gonna have more things stuck up your butt than you know what to do with.

With the ugly syndrome I was left with from last time, and the potential for this happening again (a friend told me her father had it five times), I’m not into it. Plus these unsolvable intestinal disasters and severe pain management.

So, I told them, “Take it all out. I don’t want it anymore.”

Yep. That absolutely means what you think it does. They will be removing the lowest portion of my intestines (and whatever else) and bypassing everything. I’ll have “the bag” and a sort of port (stoma) on my mid abdomen.

They’ve come along way, even since two years ago. You’d likely never know someone had one, and now they’re even doing surgeries where the bag is created from tissue inside you, and you just drain it like a tap. There are even more clever things they’re doing now. Irrigation instead of bags after healing, etc. I’ll eventually have to choose one. Lots of options. Surgery will be this summer.

Chemo and Radiation will start in April, although I’m already at the hospital quite a bit with tests and such.

I’m doing a few things differently this time concerning taking off work and making arrangements. It’ll serve me better, keep me happy, manage my panic issues a bit better, and it should work out nicely for the Church and my students. Don’t get me wrong, there will be plenty of time off. All my employer-related relationships are wonderful, and we have a good plan.

You see, this was the reason for the downstairs bedroom. I’m now five steps from my bed to the bathroom or kitchen, and I don’t have to do our super steep John Adamsesque staircase several times a day.

It is a lot of work to be sick! I think our national motto should be “the pharmacy will screw it up somehow.” But. We’ve made a safe, easy, comfortable space for me, and of course, I have my canine protector and companion.