Category: Drugs

So Far, So Good – Post-Op Report

(Getting a full colectomy, and the first days of recovery.)

Last Thursday we woke up bright and early… or dark and early I guess, since the sun wasn’t up at 3:45 am. I took my last shower with special anti-germ chlorhexidine soap, and we headed to the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center for my 5am check-in.

There’s a conveyer belt of pre-surgery rituals: I signed in at an admin area then reported to a curtained pre-op room, where a nurse handed us packets with six pre-soaked chlorhexidine wipes and instruction sheet for wiping my entire body down again, as well as special swabs to clean out each nostril (not a Covid thing, apparently, just standard). I changed into a hospital gown, reassured multiple folks that there was no chance I was pregnant, signed consent forms and got hooked up to an IV. Everyone was very kind and nice. The “team” all introduced themselves, etc. A second surgeon working with my surgeon reassured me that their surgery plan prioritized two things: 1) a successful operation that would remove any cancer, and 2) preserving as much as possible of my colon, per my request.

Then they wheeled me in to the operating room. I wanted to to see the “robotic” equipment, since my surgery was to be robotic if needed. It was a little disappointing because the arms were retracted, and there weren’t any Transformer-looking appendages—which makes sense as they probably keep those sanitized and wrapped until the very last moment. But here’s a couple of images stolen from the internet of what things might have looked like after I was knocked out:

Then the drugs hit my bloodstream and I was out. I woke up in recovery later in the afternoon, and was very happy to hear that the surgery had gone smoothly: They were able to do the surgery laparoscopically (as opposed to open) and had been able to keep about six inches of my sigmoid colon.

A few other interesting (to me) details: 1) Along with having (had) a longer-than-normal sigmoid colon, I also have a slightly longer-that-normal rectum. I’m hopeful that this extra length will be helpful as my body adjusts to its new normal functioning. 2) During my first surgery, in Australia, years ago, the surgeons opted to make the small-to-large-intestine connection (the anastomosis) behind my stomach, which is apparently quite unusual. This made the present-day surgery a little longer and more complicated for my doctors, as they had to reach around behind the stomach to do some of their work.

I stayed the night in the hospital and was able to have some visitors, like Paul, my mom and my brother. Everything was pretty painful, but I know how important it is to move in order to get my digestive system working again, so I ate some broth and and a bite of mashed potatoes, and got up to walk around the area, pushing my IV pole.

Currently, I’m at my mom’s apartment, enjoying the quiet, and the luxury of having food cooked and dishes taken away when I’m done. The first couple days was mostly pain management (Tylenol and Oxycodone), very slow walking and resting. But now I can (in limited fashion) read, write and watch TV in the evenings. For the next 4 weeks, I’m supposed to eat a low-fiber diet, which is pretty much the antithesis of everything I normally try to eat, i.e. meat, not veggies, white rice not brown, processed breads and crackers, not nuts or seeds or grains. I’m not supposed to lift more than five pounds or do abdominal exercises — even though I end up doing those inadvertently just getting in and out of bed. I asked my surgeon a litany of questions like, “can I sleep on my side? what if I twist around? can I lie on my stomach? can I do yoga?” and he pretty much said that it would take blunt force trauma to pull apart what has been sutured together. That doesn’t really jibe with the idea that lifting five pounds would be injurious… so as my energy returns I’ll have to figure out some of that out. For the moment, I’m happy to have other people do the lifting!

My least favorite part of the day is when I have to take an anti-coagulant medication called Lovenox —through a needle jammed into my belly! I’m lucky though, because instead of having to self-administer it, Paul does it for me—best husband ever! Apparently cancer patients are more prone to blood clots for longer than most people after surgery, so instead of two weeks, we’ll be doing the shots for 30 days.

For those who are waiting for the “poop report,” so far, there have been no toilet emergencies (though, TMI, my surgeons “oatmeal” example is proving apt)! At the moment, my entire digestive tract is recovering, and, somewhat counter-intuitively, I am taking a prescribed stool softener because the painkillers tend to slow everything down. I’ll have a better sense of my new normal as time goes by, but so far… so good!

Last Day With Colon

(On the last day before my full colectomy, I prepare for surgery)

Tomorrow is my colectomy. 

My surgery 20 years ago was what they call a “hemi-colectomy,” because it removed about half my colon. Some friends came to visit in the hospital back then and brought me a get well card adorned with a bold, graphic:

;

It was funny. I really enjoyed that. I don’t know what can graphically represent my situation after tomorrow. Maybe this? 

,

PREP DAY:

My pre-op prep started last night with a shower using a chlorhexadine soap that is supposed to block germ growth to prevent infection. After using it, you can’t use lotions or moisturizers, so I currently have elephant skin. I’ll take another shower today and another in the morning before we head to the hospital for our 5:00 AM call time.

For the rest of today my duties are: 1) Don’t eat any food that’s not transparent (which, since I’m too lazy to make yellow jello or clear broth, just means a water fast), 2) Take two kinds different antibiotics three times during the day, and 3) drink two bottles of magnesium citrate (which interestingly (to me) after 20 years of colonoscopy preps, I’ve never had before).

Halfway through this protocol, I can say that in terms of bitterness and nausea inducing qualities, one of the antibiotics is actually worse that the magnesium citrate, but we’re making it through. In between trips to the toilet, I’m prepping for convalescence, which is pretty much like prepping for a trip. Paying bills, set up an auto reply on my email, doing laundry and dishes and whatever tasks I’ve been putting off but now seem worth doing at the last minute. 

NEW VIDEO PROJECT

I’ve also been bossing Paul around, having him get some shots on his phone camera that I might be able to use later for one of the videos I have in my head. It’s possible that my newfound passion to do this YouTube / podcast thing is just my subconscious distracting me from the realities of the realities at hand, and my energy for the whole thing will be short-lived, but…

As threatened in my previous post, I recorded my first video yesterday! A video-version of my last post, “How often will I poop after a colectomy?”

It was a good reminder of the joys of producing the simplest of projects. We got the camera and mic set up just in time for the tree cutters, leaf blowers and house remodelers to rise in chorus outside my office window. Once these noises tapered off toward evening, the young woman in the apartment downstairs came home with a girlfriend and they had a nice 3-hour gabfest in the room right below mine. I finally recorded anyway, with the rise and fall of their conversation — that distinct rhythm and lilt of two women in their early 20s — in the background. 

My initial takes were so rambling and disjointed that I ended up reading from script instead of looking into camera which I’m expecting to be weird and off-putting, but in the end I just loaded it onto the hard drive for “Future-Barrington-who-has-learned-how-to-edit” to deal with. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough, right? 

I’m sure Future-Barrington is going to be happy with … everything.

It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m not worried at all!

My Friend Tried Shrooms

This past weekend, my friend tried mushrooms for the first time.  It had been on her list of things to try for a while because she was intrigued by reports that they make you feel smarter, more creative and happy, and even give you spiritual insights. She wanted to have spiritual insights!

Lots of people have advice about how to try shrooms: You should do them in nature–like a national park, but “safe ” nature; you should do them with other, like-minded friends who can babysit you; you should have enough time to get to the nature, trip and come down so that you can drive home. So, like 18 consecutive hours maybe. On top of this, Reddit notes that: you’ll want to be near a toilet, and a source of water;  bring paints or an instrument or a notebook to play or paint or write; bring some food for when you are coming down…

This is a lot of  organizing for someone like my friend, plus, she’s not really in the ‘shroom loop: she only had a little baggie of the fungus given to her many months ago, not really enough to share with all the like-minded friends she might find.

On Saturday afternoon, my friend had her apartment to herself. She was feeling a bit lackluster in her writing, and possibly just in life, and she had quite a bit of housecleaning to do–which she was actually deigning to do since the writing was going so unspectacularly. In the midst of this, she had an epiphany.  She thought “I feel safe in my apartment, it has a toilet and water, and food in the fridge, and I can see trees out the window which is kind of like nature. I will do the ‘shrooms here, now. It might make folding laundry more fun, or maybe I will have amazing thoughts and write them down, or draw pictures. Maybe it will make the same feel different!

She commenced reading advice on how to imbibe the mushrooms… eat them plain and bitter-tasting; bake them into brownies; eat them with dark chocolate; chop them up small and boil them and make a tea. She chopped them up small, and boiled them per instructions, and added some hot chocolate mix, which she thought was pretty clever. She also ate the last mushy mushroom grounds at the bottom of the mug, which according to the internet, was optional.

Then she waited to feel different. She researched a little more: It could take between ten minutes and an hour to feel the effects, said people on the internet. She remembered that music was also advised. She’d been meaning to figure out how to transfer music between computers, so she did this now, hurriedly, figuring it might be more difficult after the ‘shrooms kicked in.  She did some dishes, she finished folding all the laundry and made the bed. She went to the toilet and while she was there she watched a specific tree she liked outside the window.  It was swaying in the breeze. Was the tree more captivating than usual? She wasn’t sure. Did she feel different than usual? She wasn’t sure. She was a little tired, but she had started out a little tired. It wasn’t unpleasant. She sat on the expanse of freshly-made bed, sat cross-legged and rocked back-and-forth and in circles…It made feel pleasantly tipsy. More so than rocking in circles without a drug? Maayyybe?

After a while she went outside to see if what was missing was the nature. It was nice out, but also sunny and a bit too warm and she hadn’t slathered herself in sunscreen, so she went back inside. She didn’t feel like painting, or writing…but she thought she might feel a less anxious about that than usual. Or not. It wasn’t like she didn’t have occasional sober moments of un-anxiety, right? Whatever. She was happy with her made bed. She was happy with the music. So she lay there and listened to the music and rocked back and forth and thought about nothing she could remember later, she maybe took a little nap.

A couple hours later, she had the coming-down-munchies…or maybe it was dinner time, so she got up and looked in the fridge and ate something.  And then she felt a burst of creativity… or maybe not, but she opened the computer and wrote something anyway. Was her concentration better than usual? Possibly? She worked until it was time to go to sleep.

The day of magic mushrooms was over.