I received a phone call today from the hospital. My surgeon wanted to move my appointment ahead and chat with me today if possible. It surprises me how fast and efficient things run when I hear complaints of how slow the system is or how you can get lost in the cracks. Melanie made this comment to the doctor as well. Last time the doctor had ordered a CT scan and I got a call the next day. Today I received a call from CT as they did not know who the doctor was or what they wanted done. I was informed that I was going to get a call for a CT scan within the next day or so. Today my phone has been ringing off the hook for appointments and confirmation of surgery on the 5th.
Right now I need to isolate for 10 days, so he wanted to make sure I start now. This means that I can no longer go out to the parties like last week. We were going door to door handing out bread to people, but alas I can no longer do that. My career as a door-to-door bread salesman has come to a halting crash right now until I get a bubble and figure out a way to deliver the bread.
The plan is to do some cuts in my stomach, so I have cool looking scars. When people ask, I am going to tell them that I was a knife fighter in my youth and show them all the scars on my stomach. Between the pancreatitis, exploratory surgery and stomach removal I should have plenty of cuts on my stomach. It is going to look awesome. Once they cut me open for the exploratory surgery, they are going to inflate me like a balloon and fill my abdomen with fluid. They then remove the fluid and undergo analysis on it to determine whether it has spread or not. I am not sure how fun that is going to be, being filled with air and then some random fluid. I should be home the same day. It is a relatively quick procedure where they will look around for 15-20 minutes while I am completely under. The recovery should be the same as when I had the gall bladder removed, which means that I ignore the doctor’s advice and rest for 1/3rd the time. I am a seasoned pro at this laparoscopic surgery recovery though and I should try and improve on my recovery time. I will set up visual management and track my progress through daily metrics to see how I am doing. This way I will know if I am ahead or behind in recovery.
One this is done then we wait a couple of weeks and I will then have major surgery. The current plan is to remove ½ the stomach and leave enough behind so I can eat half meals. I had dreams of eating a White Castle Crave Case of 100 sliders, but I am not sure if I can do that now if I only have half a stomach. It would be great if someone does it so I can live vicariously through them. I think I can train up and over time stretch my stomach out so I can handle it. We all need dreams. The doctor is concerned about post-gastric symptoms and lack of vitamins. I look forward to taking gummy vitamins for the rest of my life. It will be like reliving childhood memories again. They are looking for times to book the major surgery, most likely in the second half of May, as long as my blood work comes back normal. I do not expect that to happen. Why have normal bloodwork when you can have exceptional bloodwork that makes surgery fun!
Mel had a lot of questions about sparking joy with her shower plants, so she is going to guest blog one day and answer all of the interview questions. She has added more plants…
10/10 would go through multiple surgeries to get cool looking scars!
Quoc Hao