Today I spoke with the surgeon and the washing from last week is all clear with no signs of cancer there. The CT scans from a couple of weeks ago are normal as well, so we will proceed with the surgery. He is anticipating taking out 50 to 75% but he is going to leave as much as possible because the more stomach I have the easier the recovery. It is anticipated that I will lose approximately 20% of my weight while I recover. That will mean that when I come out of this I would weigh around 171lbs which seems a bit light. Currently I am at 13% body fat, so the rest would be muscle mass. I would like to stay around the 200 lb range as I do not want to buy a new wardrobe for my 171lb body. I have a lot of clothing that I like at my current weight and buying all new jackets and clothing is a lot.
When we were talking he initially said I would be in the hospital for 4 to 5 days, and then it got up to possibly 7 days in the hospital. I do not get released until the pain subsides a bit and I can move around without too much pain. If that is the benchmark then I think I can get released fairly quick. Melanie has already warned me to not get discharged before I am ready. I am sure it is because she wants to make sure that the house is clean and she will have gifts at me to spark joy. Recovery is expected to be 4 to 6 weeks, and I will start chemo again 4 weeks after surgery. If everything goes according to schedule it will all be done around August 10th. Incidentally August 9th is my real birthday, and it would be a great birthday gift to be cancer free by then.
The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow, and it takes between 2 and 4 hrs to complete. By noon tomorrow I should be able to update people on how things are progressing. I may be stuck in bed for a couple of days and I am not looking forward to having a catheter. I like to wander around my room and I think I may be bed-stricken for a couple of days. Reading up on some of the recovery things I will be on a liquid diet for a couple of weeks potentially. I will need to make sure Melanie is around so she can pay attention to what I need. I tend to be a bit careless when they are telling me what I need to do and all of that. It does not spark joy to hear about restrictions. I am looking forward to having milk shakes all of the time though. I will also need to take vitamin supplements since my body will not be good at absorbing all of the nutrients. I suspect my recovery will be in a private room as I am immunocompromised I hope that I will not be stuck with other people.
My parents picked up the kids today and it is nice how Olivier always gives me a hug and tells me he loves me before he leaves. He is super easy going while Xavier just wants to stay home all of the time, so he had difficulty leaving and did not want to. Xavier was just stressed that he had to leave the house. My mother gave me a hug before she left and she managed to push her hands on my wounds which was not pleasant. A couple of nights ago Mel did something similar where she was passing me the remote and threw it onto my stomach. That did not spark joy. She had forgotten that I just had surgery. I need to pack my bag so Melanie knows what to bring in post-surgery. I am not going to have my laptop unless I end up in the hospital longer than expected….then I am going to bring my work laptop in.
I will post an update tomorrow. Unfortunately I will not be able to live blog through the procedure. Lots of love to everyone.
Quoc Hao