Wish you all the best Diki. Speedy recovery.

Post-op quite painful at the moment. They took out a baseball sized mass, so they tell me!

And here I was, hoping for a cricket ball lol. ⚾️🇬🇧

Great to see your sense of humour is intact! Slow and steady is your best bet, press that medication button like you are pounding a keyboard!

Sadly, I had a reaction to the painkillers and they’ve got me on a very low control supply at the moment. Unfortunately, a fair bit of pain. But pain is good! Tells you you’re still alive lol. 🎹😱😂

Heal up, bud. My guy says I have my last colostomy. He says old age will kill me before colon cancer will.



Damn, getting old sucks!

Russ

The best thing I found for intense pain, at least in my case, was a combination of Hydromorphone (Dilaudid) and a 12-ounce glass of ice cubes covered with Jim Bean Honey Bourbon. I wash down the pills by slowly sipping the Honey Bourbon over a 2 hour period just prior to bedtime. This usually provides me with about 4 hours sleep before wearing off, at which time I get out of bed to pee, and grab a couple extra-strength Tylenol, which usually kicks in in about 30 minutes, and provides me with enough relief to sleep an additional 3 hours before the phone starts ringing and a scammer from New Deli calls and tells me that he is with either the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Pain Management Center, Amazon, etc...

In my case, after seeing 3 different GI docs, having a colonoscopy that revealed I had colitis, which I already knew from the previous colonoscopy, my condition began to worsen. The doc that did the colonoscopy put me on Prednisone, which did nothing but cause insomnia. I knew something nasty was going on, talked with a general surgeon friend of mine, and he said it sounds like I have a fistula between my sigmoid colon and bladder. He gave me the name of the best coli-rectal surgeon in the area, he agreed, did some minimally invasive surgery, and ended up removing 8.5 inches of my sigmoid colon. I now have a permanent colostomy, which at my age, is far too dangerous to reverse. The surgeon said that technically, the colostomy could be reversed, but there was a 37 percent chance that it would not hold up and I would end up dying from sepsis.

Hang in there, Diki, do what you can to endure the pain, which will eventually go away. And, be thankful that you don't have a plastic bag glued to your side. Maintaining that bag on a daily basis is by every description, "A crappy job."

Gary

They’ll hopefully find something else for your pain.

Update…

Firstly, thanks for all the well wishes and illustration that, no matter how bad it feels, others are always less fortunate and I should count my blessings (which I do, daily!). ♥️

I am now four days post-op and the first two were pretty miserable, but has been steadily improving the last two. Talk is that they may release me tomorrow or Tuesday, which will be nice..! Then it’s home rehab as fast as I can, as all my clients are chomping at the bit to get me back to work. Slave drivers! 😂

Rehab is going to be an unknown though. I really have no idea how long it’s going to be before I can put pressure on my core to sing, or even sit on the stool and play for three hours or so. Fortunately, I have some great friends that have volunteered to take over transportation and setup/teardown for a while, and some very talented singers offering to come out and take most of the singing burden away to start with. It is very gratifying to have so many willing to help me back on my feet! Times like this, you REALLY find out who your friends are! 🥰

But whether it’s a week, or two, or more before I can even sit there and play, only time will tell. The surgeon upped his size estimate of my mass to a softball. Guess that’s another game I am going to have to learn! But he only had to take about 5” of colon, and function shouldn’t be affected (he tells me!), so maybe I’m spared the ‘shitty job’ for a few more years..! As to biopsy, still a day or two before I find if they got it all, or that I have a longer journey to take. But I don’t cross bridges before I get to them, so que sera sera there. And now you know as much as me…

Once again, thank you all for your kind words. So many of you have trudged this road long before me, and your words of wisdom are very welcome.

Onwards… always onwards! ♥️🎹

All the best to you Diki. Recover quickly.

Been away for a short while and just read your surgery report. Sorry to hear it but its over now so just get better and take your time recovering. Best wishes for yo to get back on the keys.