Surgery 5/19/15-Liver & Colon… be gone??….

Howdy…

Well I’m sure you are all quite surprised that we survived New Orleans, but we did… in one piece. No injuries, no one lost or left behind… that happens when you have one SOBER person… ha.

Anywho, Tuesday they have surgery scheduled for 9:30am. I’ll get there that morning… do some stuff… Surgery supposedly will start around 10am, liver first and then colon, maybe around 8 hours of surgery. From what I’ve been told, I can expect to not really have any recollection of anything from this night until the next day at some point… you are pretty doped up. I’ll be in the hospital for about a week, then I can go home.

My dad gets in town Sunday (17th), my mom will arrive the following week to assist in the home stay (good times)…

I guess they do the surgery Tuesday, then get you up and moving around the following day, as to get things back to normal, so your body starts “working” again.

I’ll be doing a colon prep Monday, if anyone is bored and wants to help with that… 😉

You can likely check back on the site for updates, as it will be tough for my friends and family to keep everyone individually informed, please be patient with them and try not to bombard them with too many questions…

Once out of the hospital, I will apparently be extremely tired. I’m still supposed to get up and move around as much as possible, without straining myself. It will be a boring few weeks. I expect to lose some weight… so beware when I come out of this thin and fierce… or thinner…

I’ll likely be off of work for about a month or so… depending… I don’t know much more than that…

I’d say visitors should hold off for the first day, at least. After that we’ll see how it goes… Obviously don’t visit if you’re ill or have Ebola or anything else airborne… 😉

Hmm… what else, more to come.

New Orleans… or BUST… 5/8/15

First and foremost, ask and you shall receive… thank God Angela has come back to the blog, after her hiatus… her extreme exaggerations and blatant lies are what keeps this squeaky wheel a turnin’…

I should be focusing on my healing, but we all needed her to come back to the blog… “Never let go Rose, never let go….”;
“Come back Jack, come back…”

We’re heading for New Orleans today, for a little break… from life… and St. Louis… we wanted to go somewhere it is hotter…. and more humid… you know… really sweat it out… clog your pores and arteries at the same time, while consuming rich, French and Southern meals… watch out Paula Dean, these are a few of our favorite things:

hurri-cane drinks and whis-key in kittens

hoping the temps don’t re-qui-re my mittens

gum-bo and poorboys the din-ner bell rings

into my ar-ter-ies, I hope it clings!

 

Speaking of sinking ships… Little Pissy Kitty will bust into the Bayou like no other tomorrow. We have a fishing trip planned for Monday… I have a feeling one of us from the group will end up in the Gulf (or wet land area-depending on where we fish-weather dependent).

I have been eating fresh catch from the Gulf for years now (since the Big Spill) and I’m totally fine….

We’ll be back Wednesday… I hope…

More to come… I’ll update this later…

 

And the Survey Says…

So Monday Jill had another long day of appointment hopping at the Center for Advanced Medicine in preparation for surgery.  One of the highlights of the day was filling out this wonderful questionnaire…we felt adding some personal comments might make it more believable…I mean seriously with this survey?!

Survey 4

Survey 2

Survey

Survey 3

I really did almost cry…from laughing…especially when the nurse asked Jill to open her mouth…which is honestly like watching a whale breach because she has a very, very large mouth…you know the type of mouth that dentists love because they can put both hands, the drill, and a turkey sandwich inside of and still have room to maneuver.

Anyway, Jill opens her mouth…but when the nurse was done Jill missed the cue to close it…so she continued to sit on the table with her mouth flipped open like Terrence and Phillip…terranceandphilip_small

She sat staring to the sky above like Marni trying to see the floating astronauts above…finally after looking at Jill for an extended period of time the poor nurse says…”Um, you can close your mouth!”  As a result we both started cracking up and I decided to sit quietly in the corner out of the nurses view with my mouth wide open.  I use the term “wide open”  loosely here because unlike my dear friend…I have a tiny useless little mouth that requires a dentist with hands the size of Hermey the Elf from Rudolph to work in.

Hermey

Any way…I sat staring at the ceiling the remainder of the exam…I’m pretty sure the nurse thought Jill was having a seizure from trying not to laugh as she was holding her breath.

Oh…and Jill took the wrong cup to pee in!  She took the nurses drinking cup off the counter and peed in it…which we all thought was pretty weird since they never even asked for a urine sample.

Blame it on the chemo!

pee-in-a-cup

I’m back on the blog Jill!!

~ Ang

 

April showers bring May flowers and likely Liver & Colon resections….

4/30/15 (updated 5/415)

good morning ladies and gentlemen, girls and mother truckin’ boys

surgery should take place this month May 19th, supposedly.  I still need to sign the consent forms, but it sounds like it’s game on. Remove the primary tumor from the colon and then also resect the left liver lobe. Sounds like there’s a short hospital stay and then a few week recovery period. Supposedly you experience extreme fatigue after liver surgery. That’s all I’m worried about. Then recovery, possibly chemo and maybe some more surgery to work on the right lobe.

Angela has completely boycotted the blog. She sucks. I feel so alone. I don’t want to take sole responsibility for these words. I’m probably currently downloading a virus. Oh the pressure of the blog.

Good news, I will be seeing Little Pissy Kitty soon.  I can only imagine what tales she will create for me to tell. She’s flying down here this Saturday. I wish I could hire a film crew to follow her. Ugh.

Hmm what else… My parents will be back in town during and after surgery, so watch out for those two Canadian Geese.

Update 4/27/15-surgery may be on the horizon

Friends, Romans, Countrymen:

Sorry for the delay in updates. I fell asleep, jk.

I met with my liver specialist Monday 4/20/15. Yep 4/20, I thought he had been smokin that day. After over an hour of waiting and after Angela and I had played with every gadget in that office, he finally surfaced. There had been some technical difficulties that day. Luckily our google machines were working just fine, to keep us entertained like toddlers. Angela playing her different recordings of bodily noises from the exam room, hoping to get some attention early. Followed up by Beez in the trap, some baby goat videos and instructions on how to operate the eye wash station. We were there for a long time, trust me.

His suggestion is surgery in about a month. To maybe start removing some approachable tumors. We’ll see though. Apparently this causes some major fatigue. He did compare my liver to Swiss cheese I think, not from drinking though surprisingly. I should know more in future, as he needed to consult with my colon doctor and oncologist.

Stay tuned. I’ll try to get some new port-land videos going. My hand got tired from drawing…

hi to Kaya (my little niece, she broke her arm pretty bad skateboarding last week, she had surgery this morning-she makes me proud and her mother terrified)

cheers!!

Round 6 Update-4/18/15

Not much to report. Round six was somewhat uneventful. Catfish was starving the whole time and I was half asleep. Jen Wiese graced us with her presence,  black jacket and all… (Sorry Jen).

my blood work looked really good this week. All counts were where they should be. The nurse was a little shocked at how good my liver enzymes, etc were, after overhearing Angela and Jen and I reminiscing  about some of our late nights out in past.

I meet with with the liver specialist this Monday afternoon to touch base and talk about my CT and PET scans (meow).

My only lesson or tip for the week is this: “don’t try to drink anything shortly after using lidocaine mouthwash”. You’ll just end up choking to death… That’s all.

Hopefully angela won’t be as busy in future so the blog will look better and have beefier stories. We were just tired this week I guess. I’ll invite one of the kittens back if things don’t liven up.

 

 

 

Update 4/10/15

Warning, I have no idea what I’m doing. I need Angela to fix everything I post. Port videos are jacked up, there’s a naked man in the middle of this post…  This is a cry for help…

Well there’s not much to report. Pissy Kitty got married Tuesday and I’ve had two rather large pimples in the last week. Probably from the stress of the wedding, BTO (but the opposite). JimmyOne of the latest side effects apparently is random acne. Oh to feel young again and like  I’m going through puberty. A little less awkward this time around, I guess.  My ass and thighs were smaller the first time.  Yes Angela, it’s hard to imagine, but it’s true, my ass was smaller at one time.

I learned today that hermit crabs outgrow their shells, just like I have outgrown my jeans from high school… And then college… Hmm. My butt is just looking for a new home that fits, that it can grow into… This was just a plot to hopefully squeeze back into a mad pair of acid washed Jordache jeans. Thank you colon cancer!

Anywho, like I said, not much to report. I feel fine, for the most part. I think I look fine. Yeah! I have to avoid getting too much sun, as apparently one of the drugs I’m on will cause light sensitivity.  My wizardly brother in law must also be on this drug, see above photo. Sunscreen: buying organic isn’t always better… You look terrible DragonLady! Icarus has nothing on you… Whoa man.

Stay tuned. More to come. Sometimes, on a cancer blog, less is more…