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Hi, this is Carla again.

Steve has thought about doing another post, but life has been so crazy lately, I decided I'd better step in. So here is an update.

The good news on Steve's health is that he finally had a painless bowel movement last week! That may sound like a funny thing to say, but since his reversal surgery, having anything go passing through his sphincter has not been fun. He had started to think that poop and pain were going to be the new norm. Now there is hope for the future.

The next piece of news is that Steve and I ran away on a week long cruise to Alaska with my parents and all but one of my siblings. (My brother's wife was due to have a baby and that is a really bad time to disappear for a week.) I am the oldest of seven children so it was quite the miracle to pull off. It was knowing the cruise was coming that kept Steve focused during the last few rounds of his chemo. If there had been any delays, he would have been unable to make the trip. It was wonderful to leave the heat of summer in Utah and go north where the highest temperatures were in the 60's. Alaska is an amazing and beautiful place to visit. Doing it on a cruise ship spoils you rotten.

After we got back from Alaska, school started up for Steve and the kids. Steve was down to his last year of school when he was diagnosed with cancer. It was really hard for him to put his education on hold while he dealt with his cancer. Fortunately, one of the classes he was required to take in order to graduate was available this fall. So he is in class every Tuesday and Thursday night. He has also been putting in overtime at work at the request of his employer. It brings in some extra money, but means we don't see a whole lot of him during the week.

What is nice to see is that his brain is fully functioning again and his stamina is increasing. Chemo took so much out of him! There is no way to explain how much it affects you and in so many different ways. I'm just glad he was willing to go through it all. Hopefully we will get to have him for years to come.

As for me, I'm taking the year off from working at the elementary school. This last year was the hardest year of my life to date. (I wouldn't mind keeping it that way.) This year is also the last year that I will probably have all my children at home together. Nathan is a senior in high school and will be leaving home next year. I want to enjoy this last year with my family all together. It is hard to do that if you still have all the washing, cleaning, shopping and cooking to do when your kids get home from school. Maybe, I can finally stop feeling tired all the time if my life is less complicated. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. You are in ours as well.

I Got Mugged

This is my mug shot.

Alice's mug finally got here from England. She designed it herself and it looks great. I really like mine.

Alice and Mabel

Alice Pyne is a 15 year old girl in England fighting cancer. After four years of treatment the cancer has spread throughout her body. There is nothing more the doctors can do. But Alice isn't done. She created a bucket list at the encouragement of her mother and posted it on a blog for her friends to see. Her blog went international almost over night. Wonderful people all over the world are rallying to encourage Alice and help her accomplish her bucket list. That's where the mug comes in. It's from her bucket list.

Alice's Bucket List

Alice's Mug

Alice is one amazing young lady. You'll like her, too, I think. It's completely understandable after meeting her how I got mugged.

Inconceivable!

A day without skid marks? Inconceivable!

But a recovering rectal cancer patient can always dream.

My nurse friend recently asked me how my new plumbing was coming along. I answered that I'm not miserable so we're pretty excited about that. It's an interesting perspective, yes, but considering I could have ended up wearing adult diapers for life, I am pleased with my progress. While my sphincter is still sensitive, I'm not so jumpy on the toilet seat anymore. Bowel movements frequently come in clusters. With a smaller storage tank, I might make two or three trips to the restroom over the course of an hour before getting a break for several hours. Still no clear signals for when I need to go, hence the skid marks and the extra laundry.

I went to Huntsman Cancer Institute last Friday for my first followup appointments. I started the day with a CT scan in the morning. Who doesn't love drinking two bottles of barium contrast solution for breakfast? I got berry flavor this time. Yum? After the scan I went to the lab for a series of blood tests. An hour later I met with my oncologist for a check up. Overall my body is healing nicely after a year of hellish cancer treatment. I'm just left wanting for strength and stamina. My doctor reported that my numbers looked good from the blood tests. Good news there.

Mixed news on the results of the CT scan. No sign of anything in my lungs or liver, but I have a swollen lymph node at the join near my original tumor sight. The join is where Dr. Slow hooked me back together after removing my rectum along with 18 other lymph nodes. The doctor explained that a swollen lymph node could just be the result of irritation from the surgery. Then again, it could also be cancer. Rather than waiting a year for the next CT scan, I will be going back in six months to see if the swelling has gone down. I go back in three months for another round of blood tests. They want to watch this closely.

My last appointment on Friday afternoon was with my dermatologist. She did a full body check looking for any trouble spots. With my fair skin and a lifetime of sun damage, skin cancer remains a real threat. I left her office with four spots on my head being sprayed with liquid nitrogen. It always feels good to freeze potential cancer in its tracks. At least after the stinging goes away. I think she likes me because she invited me back in six months.

Did I mention that I did the whole day of appointments by myself? Carla and the kids were down on Lake Powell last week with my brother and his family on their house boat. So who had more fun, huh?

And who would have thought a year ago that I would survive weeks of radiation, months of chemo therapy, two surgeries, and the longest endurance event of my life? Inconceivable!

What a sunset!

I drove home from work tonight just as the sun set over the Great Salt Lake. Wow! Absolutely gorgeous. I haven't seen one that good for months. We live about half an hour west of my office building along Interstate 80 so I got to see the reds, pinks, oranges and yellows all the way home. Perfect way to end the day.

God sure made a beautiful place for us to live.

Life is Good

Guess who's reading books again? Yep, that would be me. I'm on my third book since surgery. The best part is that I want to read and I'm enjoying each book. I love being done with cancer treatment. And for Fiona, my second book was "The Book Thief." Wow. That is a different book, but a great story. I quite liked it. Now I am almost finished with "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Good stuff.

Guess who started back to work this week? Yep, that would be me. After seeing my surgeon last Thursday, he said I was able to return to work whenever I wanted. So I talked with my supervisor at the office and we agreed I would work partial days this week with the goal of working up to full shifts by next week. The good news is that so far my ability to concentrate and stay focused has improved immensely since I've been off of chemo. There's a surprise!

Guess who's going back to college? Yep, that would be me. I started thinking about finishing up my course work at Westminster College over this last weekend. Another sign I'm done with my cancer treatment. On Monday I dropped by the campus and visited with one of the professors in my department. He was excited to have me back and felt confident that we could get me graduated by next May (only 12 months after I was originally supposed to finish). I'll be going back on Tuesday and Thursday nights starting the end of August.

Guess who still hasn't had any accidents since coming home from the hospital? Yep, that would be me. Now that I'm done with my cancer treatment it is all about the poop. Or at least it certainly seems that way. I am happy to report that diarrhea is mostly a thing of the past. Soft and clumpy is a vast improvement. Things to improve would include my sphincter not feeling like it's on fire each time it passes anything (radiation damage) and less noise and gas from the new plumbing. Boy, does it make some great, gurgley sound effects. Even in public.

Guess who's pretty happy being done with cancer treatment? Yep, that would be me. What a crazy year it has been. Each day I feel a bit more human, a bit more like the other people around me. Just tonight I was over at our church and some respected friends of mine commented on how much more animated I am. One of them said I was even talking in whole sentences instead of short phrases. So there you go. I am back to talking as much as I ever did. I am still me! All in all, I have to say that life is good.

Timed Voids

First things first, I am home. They kicked me out of the hospital Monday afternoon. Of course, it helped that they also thought I was ready to leave.

I ended up not getting any kind of an appetite back until Wednesday night, so those first days home were interesting. I had to try and stay hydrated, my body was trying to recover from surgery, and my new plumbing was trying to make sense of itself all with little or no food to work with. This led to continual cramps, bloating, gas, diarrhea, dry heaves, all the fun stuff. I managed it with pain meds and forced eating. We stayed on soft foods like chicken noodle soup, yogurt, and protein drinks. (May I just say here that I love my wife. She is one strong force in my life.)

Sometime on Wednesday night I realized my salivary glands were running overtime. And I was craving food! So I headed to the kitchen and fixed myself a grilled cheese sandwich with Campbell's tomato soup. Dipping those sandwich strips into that creamy soup was pure pleasure on the palette, and my first real meal in a week. Eating has improved each day since. Yay! Eating is such a cool part of life.

Of course with more food comes more waste which leads me to the next part of this update...

So far so good on the bum end of things. I've been given enough trusted advice on this topic to feel pretty good about our progress. For example, no major mishaps since we've been home. (And yes, if you want to read between the lines put the emphasis on since.) This means I am getting to the toilet in time. 

Let's put this into perspective.

1) My pelvis received massive amounts of radiation pre surgery.

2) An extremely important part of my large intestines is missing, as in my rectum.

3) There is currently no communication between my new plumbing and my brain. Full and empty are indiscernible.

4) All I have produced since surgery is gas and diarrhea. Lots.

Under the circumstances I am pretty darn proud of my little sphincter at the end of the line. In spite of its own aches and pains it is doing its job admirably. That's a great start.

Oh, I almost forgot.

A friend, who is also a nurse, asked me how I was getting along the other night. I explained the situation and said that I was simply hitting the restroom at regular intervals to stay ahead of any accidents. He smiled and said, "You know, there's a name for that. It's called timed voids."

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!
Unfortunately, Steve didn't get to go home for Father's Day. That would have been the best father's day present he could have had. I think he is getting tired of being here at the hospital, but doesn't know what he can do to make it happen. He is still having problems with nausea and has no appetite or real energy.
 I ended up leaving to go home around noon so that I could take a shower ( it had been three days since my last one), change clothes, attend church with the kids, etc. The kids and I all came back to the hospital at 4:00 p.m., but Steve wasn't feeling up to much visiting.  They gave Steve a large card they had made for him and a small plate of peanut butter cookies. They went home at 5:30 so that he could keep resting. We'll just have to have a delayed father's day celebration when he is finally feeling well enough to enjoy it.