Five years ago this week I had surgery to remove my colon. I wouldn’t say I was nervous, the dilaudid helped take care of that. Also the blood loss. I remember waking up in recovery attached to machines, seeing my Mom. I was lucky they let her in since there were so many restrictions around visitors due to covid. I would be in the hospital for a couple weeks afterwards, I’m not even sure exactly how long, to recover and deal with other issues that came with the surgery. When they do surgery on your guts it can take time for them to ‘wake up’, so I had to get an NG tube which is a tube they stick up your nose and down your throat into your stomach to suck up everything sitting there waiting to be digested. That sucked. I also had some fluid in my lungs, which they had to stick a needle in my back to drain and it filled up what looked like a large pickle jar.
I had to get used to pooping in a new way as well. I spent 30 years pooping a certain way and then all of a sudden I got a bag on my side to empty in the toilet. They had to explain how it works to me twice because I was drugged out on pain meds the first time they tried. I woke up one night and the bag had exploded and soaked the bed. Not fun. A colostomy bag is nice to have if you’re visiting Paris, keeps your valuables safe from pickpocketers. For those who don’t know how colostomy bags work, there’s a small piece of your small intestine that sticks out of your abdomen at all times that connects to the bag. It doesn’t have any nerve endings, but it was still wild to have a piece of your insides on the outside. It does tickle though when you don’t chew up your food completely and you have a big piece of French fry make its way through. I can still feel that.
I got pretty bad before surgery too, in and out of the hospital because the medicine I had been taking for years to treat Ulcerative Colitis had stopped working. And then I got c-diff. I couldn’t stand up without passing out from the blood loss. Busted my nose on the door at home. One night in the hospital a nurse’s assistant came to help me onto the bedside commode, and she walked away for a second to grab some toilet paper and I passed out and fell off the toilet and busted my face on the ground. I woke up with a bunch of doctors around me because she had pressed the emergency response button, and they helped me back to bed. I was covered in blood, and one of the doctors asked where it had come from. It was from my butt.
Anyway, I had a colostomy bag for six months and there were many ups and downs with that, but I felt a whole helluva lot better than when I was sick. The worst days with the colostomy bag were still better than being sick. After six months the surgeon reconnected my insides into a ‘j-pouch’, so my small intestine works like my large intestine used to. I’d be lying if I said this whole thing wasn’t traumatic, or that the hospital food was good. Not just on me, but for my mom, dad, and sister too. I was out of it a lot of the time, they were the ones who were awake for it all. Without them I wouldn’t be here.
I still poop about ten times a day since I ain’t got a large intestine no more and space is limited, but I’m thankful to still be here. And thankful to my surgeon, Dr. B.
