Thanks Guys for the welcome back. It's been too long, and it is greatly appreciated.
My health has been improving, and I must say the bowel cancer was a big wake up call, and I'm unashamedly going to rant about it now! So the easily bored, or squeamish, please look away now.
I went into Hospital with abdominal pains thinking it was my pre-existing hernias, but after a ultra sound scan I was whisked up to the ward, from A&E, in the blink of an eye, prep'd for emergency surgery, and after signing a few forms, I woke up with a stoma bag hanging off the right side of my abdomen, and a row of 47 staples from just under my sternum, to below my belly button!! That was a shock in itself.
My surgeon told me I had a 35mm cancerous polyp blocking my large bowel (or colon), how long it had been there we don't know, but it nearly killed me! - that bit got to me, - just how close I was to not being here at all.
So all of you aged in your late 40's and older (you know who you are) please PLEASE go get checked out by your GP, as a matter of course - it can save your life! I was about 2 hrs away from my bowel rupturing and killing me!! No joke - it was THAT close!
My bowel operation was a Laparotomy/High anterior resection/ileocolic resection & formation of abcarian stoma. I know its a mouthful but its quite a major procedure and VERY invasive, and it hurts like hell! (in lay mans terms they cut a portion of my lower colon out and diverted the "waste" outside, into a disposable bag, attached to my body via a stoma [
an abcarian stoma is actually part of my colon that protrudes outside my body to deliver the "waste", it comes with the added attraction of actually SEEING your own waste emptying into the bag, which you then have to empty into the loo, by yourself, whilst still recovering from surgery, AND having the evil side effects of chemo])
As you may imagine I've learnt a lot about bowel cancer, the various kinds, and places in the bowel where it develops, managing an Abcarian Stoma, whilst my bowel recovered from surgery, learning about Chemotherapy, the drugs involved, what they do, and how they affect your body.
After recovering from surgery I was placed into yet another Hospital (the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse - dedicated to cancer research and care) receive Chemotherapy. 6 doses of "poison", to target the particular cancer I had developed, as scans after surgery had shown "calcifications" in my liver, in other words they where concerned the cancer had spread through the blood stream, into my liver.
The 3 months worth chemotherapy, would shrink these "tumours", and when my bowel had recovered enough, they would go back in, reverse the stoma, (ie take the bag off) & reattach my bowel (to make it whole again) and then take a peach sized amount out of my liver, where these "tumours" were situated. Again a rather invasive operation - and again it hurt like hell!!
After that, another 3 months of chemo, just to make sure the cancer didn't come back, and its hasn't! Im all clear! Yay me!
I'm now in the latter stages of recuperation where I'm trying to loose weight (I ballooned up like a pregnant Ethiopian from 78 kgs to 108.7kgs!!) from all the steriods in the chemo, the pain killers, and the medicines to treat the side effects. (pins & needles in fingers eyes neck & feet, reflux and nausea)
I couldn't, and still can't, exercise due to the aches and pains I endured from both major surgeries and the chemo (I still have pins & needles in my feet, that stop me from standing/walking for long periods of time) so most of my time has been spent perusing Ebay, model railway sites, and making card buildings to pass the time of day. But the appointment and medicines I have had to take prevented me from getting online too much, as the side effects of chemo were, to say the least, debilitating. Vomiting, nausea, dealing with a stoma bag, and trying to look after myself (I live alone btw) When you're going through all that by yourself, its rather taxing on your body, as well as your mental state.
So, as I say, your welcome has been greatly appreciated, and if only 1 of you are persuaded, by my above narrative, to seek out a visit to their GP, to get checked out, my rant has not been in vain!
research = asking a bloke who knows a bloke who said something vaguely similar to what I wanted to hear! - Tony (aka the Phat Controller)
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Brilliant!
