Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

It’s In The Bag

Here’s a picture of me taken in my actual hospital room on Tuesday May 30th. I’m displaying my 3 hospital bracelets and my “hep loc” IV connection thingie. Oh… and the charming and always-in-style hospital gown provided by Fairfax Inova Hospital.

And lest you get the wrong idea about exactly what kind of surgery I’m in the hospital for — the wires coming out of my ears run to my iPod. Not to a lightning-driven powerup system.

I’ve been in the hospital since Thursday May 25th and with luck, I’ll be discharged May 31.

If you’re interested enough to have read this far, you’re probably by now asking “So, Rebecca, what kind of surgery did you have that required you to be in the hospital for a whole week — that’s a pretty long hospital stay by today’s standards!”

And so I shall tell you.

Before I do, though, I want to spend a little time talking about personal privacy, and how it squares with other peoples’ legitimate needs for information.

Contrary to what you might think if you’ve spent much time reading my blog, I actually do have some personal boundaries. There are things I would never write about online because they’re private and because there’s no good reason why anyone else would need to know about these things.

When I first began my current medical journey, I spent a lot of time online looking for information about my condition and the surgery I was going to have. I found lots of articles heavily loaded with medical jargon and dry statistics but very little in the way of people’s personal stories just telling what it was like to have this thing happen to them. Was it especially painful? How long did it take to recover, really. How was your life changed by the procedure? It surprised me that I was unable to find much — and it may be that I just wasn’t looking in the right place. I think, though, the dearth of information may also have been due to the kind of procedure it was. In a world where people will happily tell you all about their breast augmentation surgery — a lot of people still don’t feel very comfortable describing surgery for removel of a giant polyp in their….um….rectum.

Yes. Rectum.

A word that inspires raucous cackling on the part of pre-teen boys everywhere.

I’ve got to believe I’m not the only person who’s come up dry looking for info on this condition. So, I’m writing about my own experience as a sort of public service for other people who are going through it. If you’re one of those people, be assured that it’s a lot more common than you might think. I’ll tell you about my experience and maybe that will make it easier for you to prepare for your own treatment. If you’ve got no interest in this topic or if you think it’s just going to be WAY WAY more information than you want about your humble narrator (and, believe me, there’s going to be LOTS of information), then I encourage you to stop reading right now. This is one topic for which my tolerence level for smart-ass comments is probably going to be somewhat low, so…

Okay.

First, let’s just deal with the word “rectum”, okay? All your rectum is is the lowest part of your colon. Your colon is your large intestine. The rectum is the last few inches where poop (choose your own cutesy term here if you want) waits to be expelled through your anus. Anus and rectum aren’t the same thing. Hey, maybe you already knew that. I didn’t.

So let me give you the short version of how I wound up here in the hospital:

• About a year ago I began noticing what I thought was an internal hemorrhoid situation developing. Everything I’d read about interal hemorrhoids, this thing matched the description. It sometimes popped out a bit when I was going then would slide back in by itself. It would bleed a bit when it would do that. Sounds just like an internal hemorrhoid, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
• In March or April I had my annual exam. Since I’m turning 50 this year, I asked the doctor about getting a screening colonoscopy along with all the other “you’re getting old now” tests. She agreed it would be a good idea and set it up.
• I had the colonoscopy — even mentioned to the tech ahead of time that I had an “internal hemorrhoid” situation so the doc should be careful down there — and we discovered that “Hey! That’s no hemorrhoid! That’s a giant polyp in your rectum, lady!” The polyp was too big even for the doctor to remove through the scope. If this sort of thing interests you, it was of the type called “villous adenoma”. That kind of polyp is especially eager to become cancerous so, even if it hadn’t been taking up a whole lot of butt space, I’d still have needed it out.
• The GI doc referred me to the colo-rectal surgeon and she took a look through “Ye Olde Rigid Proctoscope” (which really wasn’t as awful as I’d thought it would be. The secret is just to relax and think happy thoughts… )
  The GI doc had thought the surgeon might be able to just remove the thing by going up through the anus. Nope — not so. She couldn’t even see the base of the thing to know where she’d have to start cutting.
• So… surgery was scheduled. Before the surgery I had a CT scan of my pelvis and abdomen so my surgeon could get the lay of the land — and could look for other suspicious areas in the neighborhood of the polyp. Nothing scary was uncovered by the CT scan, so we were on.

My doctor went in through my lower abdomen, using a laparoscope to assist. She ended up having to remove most of my rectum. The remaining bit of rectum was stapled to the colon. I also now have a temporary ileostomy so my colon can rest while it’s healing. An ileostomy, like a colostomy, is where the intestine is brought out through the abdominal wall and waste is collected in an externally worn appliance. (“The Bag.”) In an ileostomy, it’s the small intestine — not the large instestine (colon) that’s brought out to the surface. More about what it’s like to have an ileostomy later. Although no cancer was found in the tissue that was removed, they did find a small area of dysplasia (essentially abnormal pre-cancerous cells) on one edge of what was removed. The doctor told me she actually cut a bit more than that when she did the anastomosis so there’s probably nothing left to worry about. She’ll be keeping an eye on that section in particular, though.

Anyway, so now I have an interesting new collection of incisions in my gut: I think I counted seven new holes. Three small incisions are related to the laparoscope. One bigger inch and a half-long incision under my navel is also scope-related. There’s a weird sort of puncture wound in my left gut where a drain was left in place after the surgery. I’ve got a 5 or 6 inch incision that runs midline down from a couple inches below my navel right down to the pubic bone. (Cool! Held together with metal staples!) And then the ileostomy, of course. You would think that number of gut wounds would be very painful BUT, at the suggestion of my very clever surgeon, I opted for pre-operative placement of an epidural anesthesia line. (It didn’t hurt at all. They gave me a big shot of morphine and that’s pretty much the last thing I remember about getting the epidural placed.) They didn’t use the epidural as the anesthesia for the surgery itself — no, no. I had the usual “totally asleep” type stuff for that. Rather, the epidural was for post operative pain control. I have to say — it worked REALLY well. While it was in, I had NO pain. They took it out yesterday (also painless) and my pain level since then has been easily controlled with an occasional Percocet. No big deal at all. The only down-side to the epidural is that it tends to make your blood pressure low. My blood pressure is naturally low to begin with so, with the needle in my back, it got REALLY low — we’re talking readings of 70-something over 40-something at times. Because it was so low, I was sleepy all the time and couldn’t stand up for very long without feeling like I was going to faint. So… that slowed me down a bit. I’d definitely go with the epidural again, though. What a great pain control method!

The surgery went well, though it took longer than anticipated. It’s a difficult and complicated procedure, the pelvis is a small area to work in, and — from what my doctor said — my tissue was a bit on the “friable” side. Stitches wanted to rip out. Another interesting revelation was that I am very much NOT fat inside. The surgeon said she could even easily see my ureters — apparently that’s not common. So… to those of you who have the idea I’m fat, now the truth is out. I’m not even fat INside.

Okay… well, that’s probably enough for now. The next installment will be all about what it’s like to have an ileostomy.

Post Hands Frist a Photo Op

Bill Frist: A Doctor at Heart
“Well, your first patient was a dog,” [Frist's wife] Karyn said. In medical school, Frist cut out a dog’s heart and held it in his palm. It continued to beat for a slippery minute.

That’s truly horrifying. Just stop and think about that for a second, folks. We’re talking about the heart of a living — probably otherwise healthy — animal. He cut it out. He held it, still beating, in his hand for a minute. Until the dog died.

This is something noble??

This is something he’s proud of??

To my way of thinking, you might as well be talking about the living heart of a child ripped from its chest, the child left to die. Believe me, I’m painfully aware that the majority of people don’t feel as strongly as I do about the value of an animal’s life. Still, lives taken in the name of “research” (a dubious process to begin with, in my opinion) should be honored. To me, when someone as repellant as Bill Frist starts talking about the animals he’s killed, it’s like watching a monstrous psycho-killer toss around the battered corpse of an infant.

Yeah. It’s that bad.

Sigh.

I presume Frist has saved people’s lives through heart surgery. That really is a good thing. So… there’s that, at least.

Anyway… the whole point of this Washington Post article is to give Bill Frist some free reputation-building space and a nice little photo op. “Here’s Bill Frist in scrubs listening to a gorilla’s heartbeat at the zoo. What a guy!”

What the hell is THAT all about??

Why is the Post being all warm and fuzzy with Bill Frist??

Screw Frist’s extra-curricular gorilla activities.

Let’s talk about how he wants to control what you watch on television.

Let’s talk about how Frist wants to make bigotry against homosexuals a part of the Constitution.

Let’s talk about how truly awful it would be if somehow this man became president.

Party Chicks

The falcon chicks continue to grow and get stronger. Their parents leave them alone a lot during the day now. The chicks still spend much of their time huddled together but they’re stretching out their little legs and wings more and more often — testing them. Check out all the meal leftovers messing up the nesting platform! It looks like mostly feathers and bones to me. I think the parents feed them a lot of smaller birds they’ve caught.

Sleep… Sleeeeeep….

Readi-Cat

In preparation for a CT scan I’m having today, I have to drink a couple bottles of this stuff called Readi-Cat Barium Sulfate Suspension. I opted for the “berry smoothie” flavor. I always like to know exactly what I’m getting myself into so I’d googled “readi-cat” ahead of time to look for real people’s opinions of what this stuff is like. (I’d heard it was awful.) Every single testimonial I found went on and on about how terrible the stuff is.

Well.

I’m here to tell you, people. It’s not that bad. You wouldn’t probably choose to drink it for fun, but it’s certainly not as terrible as people make it out to be. Maybe the approach I took to it is what spared me.

Do what I did:

• refrigerate the stuff ahead of time
• drink it right down — don’t let it sit in your mouth
• you’ll probably need 3 or 4 good-sized swigs to complete each bottle — take them (don’t put it off)

By the time I got to my last swig, my mouth was starting to figure out that this was probably something it didn’t want to have in it. But by then, hey!, I was done with it.

It’s not nearly as bad as people will have you think. Chill it. Swig it down. Done.

Mildy Freaky Picture

I used Apple’s “Photo Booth” application with the “X-ray” effect — then fiddled around with the saturation and contrast a bit using Graphic Converter. I like what it did to my eyes. Weird.

Always Check for Ferrets Before Sitting

I got a spam email this morning for some sex-related product and “Always Check for Ferrets Before Sitting” was what was in the subject line.

I have to hand it to whomever came up with that. It at least got me to open the email!

Heh, heh….

iChat: Unbelievably Wonderfully Cool? Or Just Extremely Swell?

Okay, so the spouse and I decided to make sure we knew how to do the video conferencing thing because he’s leaving for a business trip tomorrow morning. And… damn! Is this ever cool!

iChat is easy to use and really does work just as slick as the Apple ads say. So, so cool! This is going to work really well for us. Mark is a slow typist so he’s not much fun on plain old IMs. This will be perfect. He can show me his hotel rooms, I can hold the cats up to the camera so they can meow to “daddy” (…yes, we’re very lonely people…)

My New MacBook

Many might argue that I’m not deserving of a new Apple MacBook. But to them I’d say, “You’re just jealous because it’s ME and not YOU. Neener, neener, neeener!”

I got one of the white ones. It’s lovely. It’s slimmer than the G4 iBook and has a different kind of keyboard. On the G4, the keyboard could be lifted up and moved out of the way for installing memory or airport cards or whatever. On the MacBook, the keyboard is integrated right into the body of the computer — which will make it much less likely that a person could, say, accidentally lose a sunflower seed shell under one of the keys and wind up with a letter “L” that keeps wanting to insert itself into whatever one is typing.

Not that I’d have any sort of personal experience with that kind of thing.

Anyway… so my lovely husband bought me this new MacBook today. I think maybe he just felt sorry for me because I’m going in the hospital later this week for surgery. Hey, I’m not above accepting sympathy gifts — especially if they’re of the computational sort.

These new MacBooks have one especially cool feature — a built in camera! Since Mark has a new MacBook Pro (also with built-in camera), he and I will be able to video conference when he’s out-of-town on business (which is fairly often lately.) That will be nice — especially while I’m still recovering from surgery.

Anyway, besides video conferencing, you can also take still photos and apply all sorts of silly special effects to them. Here’s one I just took.

Morning Feeding

They’re all standing upright pretty well now and have begun to move around the platform more on their own. When the parent arrived with this morning’s mouse, I saw one chick — who was initially stuck underneath another chick and facing the wrong direction — fairly quickly pull himself out and turn himself around to get some food.