Week Twelve

Week Twelve, here we are.  Weight last Friday was 136.9 lbs.  Weight this Friday (9/15) was 139.8.  Wow, that’s a pretty good weight gain.

(FYI, the ‘header’ picture this week is Chris and Carol at a lake near Oslo, Norway, 2015)

My attitude at the start of Week Twelve was pretty good. I was able to do a little eating, and I even salivated before having some cottage cheese with yogurt, chopped up cucumber and garlic.  I also ate some tapioca and had quite a decent serving of spaghetti. I was starting to feel that the worst was over, and I was finally on the road to recovery.  While the food intake was not enough to sustain me without my feeding pump, it was encouraging to be able to eat something. And we affectionately named the pump ‘Jo-jo’.

Drew and Mel fix me some spaghetti

 

I started mixing my non-fiber Osmolite cans with fiber-rich Jevity and the results have been good.  Good BM’s, some weight gain….tenths of a pound at a time, but it all adds up!

Then late Sunday I came down with a bit of a sore throat and a mild temperature, 99.4.  Monday I was feeling worse, throat more sore, a slight head cold, and temperature over 100.  I contemplated calling the doctor to see what I should do, but my chemo doctor had gone back to Australia for a visit, and I was going to see the surgeon on Tuesday anyway.  I didn’t want to call the clinic, talk to someone unfamiliar with my situation, and have them send me to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room to go through a battery of tests.  So I took a couple tylenol, went to bed early, and tried to sweat out the fever.

Tuesday I woke up feeling okay, not well, but better.  The throat was still sore.  Thermometer said temperature was still 100, but I began to suspect its accuracy.  It was one of those digital readout thermometers, not the old-fashioned mercury-filled kind.

Then we drove over to Sacramento to meet with the surgeon.  Told him about the sore throat and temperature, but he didn’t seem too concerned.  I did express some worry about how I was feeling going into the weekend: the wedding celebration in Cambria, being away from home for two days, lots of folks and activity, and then coming home on Sunday perhaps feeling kinda punk just a few days before the huge operation on the 20th.  He concurred and we moved the surgery date to September 27th, a week later.

The surgeon said the operation is a huge one, bigger than heart surgery or a lung transplant, but that it is a life-saver.  There are all the standard risks involved, but they are small.  He said the operation takes two to three hours, and he does it with a partner, so there are two pairs of eyes and two brains assessing the situation and making decisions.  They will make three small incisions in my stomach to take out the stomach peg, insert the intestine peg, and remove the top part of my stomach and surrounding lymph nodes.  Then they’ll make a large incision on my side where they’ll go in to remove a large part of the esophagus and attach the stomach to what’s left of the esophagus.

 

He said I’ll be in the hospital for seven days, will have the feeding tube in my small intestine for two to three weeks, and will be on a liquid diet for a few weeks.  I will then start eating up to six times a day, taking small bites, and chewing the food thoroughly.  Gradually I should get down to four feedings a day, but I will be taking small bites and chewing slowly for the rest of my life.  That will certainly be new!  He also said I will have to sleep on a 30 degree incline.  The operation will remove the sphincter muscle between the esophagus and stomach, and if I sleep flat, the contents of my stomach can run out and into what’s left of the esophagus.  UGH!  First order of business is to get a 30 degree wedge pillow.  And, actually, he said as we grow older we should all be sleeping on an incline, as the aforementioned sphincter muscle tends to weaken with age.

After we got home from the doctor’s office, we decided to take my temperature again, even though I did not feel at all feverish.  The thermometer registered 102, so we knew it had gone haywire, and bought a new one.

On Wednesday Scott and Heidi arrived from Grants Pass.  So now we had a houseful, with both boys and their wives.  Wednesday night was a late one, but I retired from the festivities by 10 pm and tried to get a good night’s sleep.

Heidi, Scott, Andrew, and Mel

Thursday Andrew and Mel headed down to Cambria to do some prep work for their wedding celebration on Saturday.  Back in Woodlandia, Scott, Heidi, and Carol did a bunch of shopping and Scott is doing a lot of prep work for the Friday night ‘rehearsal’ dinner, for which we (I should say Scott) are responsible.  I spent a quiet day with my friend Jo-jo, and even fixed myself a smoothie.

So that’s about it for this week.  We are leaving late morning today (Friday) to drive down to Cambria, returning on Sunday.  We’ll let you know how the festivities went.  See  you next week.