Jpouch Surgery Tomorrow

It's been many moons since I wrote here; since then I moved to Lincoln, MA, plus many other changes. Lots of stress in the last few months, taking its toll especially on my jpouch. Often too scared to eat, I've lost about ten pounds since last summer. Life in the bathroom is too long and too painful; I finally contacted Dr. Peter Mowschenson, and tomorrow he operates on me. It's "exploratory," but I'm pretty sure I know what's wrong: too much stress! Will be interesting to find out what his diagnosis is. Mowschenson is the surgeon who originally removed my entire colon back in November 2003 -- he saved my life! He's also the creator of my jpouch. I consider him the expert, will try to do whatever he recommends. But if he agrees with me and tells me the main thing is to make my life less stressful, I will need suggestions about how to do that!

Meanwhile, I have discovered that I can swim an Ironman-length swim very easily! It's 2.4 miles (that's 170 lengths of my 25-yard pool) -- first time I tried it was about two weeks ago. Coach Bill says my time (1:23:39) was "very respectable." I didn't even train for this, it was a sudden inspiration. Last week I suddenly felt inspired to do it again, and it was just as easy as the first time. And my time on the 2.4 miles was only 25 seconds longer, which barely counts.

If I could find the time to swim more often, even just the plain ol' mile I used to do, I'd probably be less stressed. But here in Lincoln I'm further away from my pool, find I'm going less often. There are pools in Concord I could join; I should probably look into it. But I like the social aspect of the Mount Auburn Club, where I've been swimming for ten years and know a lot of people. With all the other changes in my life I'm dealing with, I'm not ready to change pools.

I'm very scared about being in the hospital again, under full anaesthesia, with results yet unknown. Even though I've been through this before, and it's a lot less serious than losing my colon was, just being in that environment triggers many awful and painful memories.

I hope Dr. Mowschenson can find an easy solution so that I can resume eating enough to gain back some of the weight, feel healthy, sleep better (fewer trips to bathroom during the night), and get back to enjoying a leg that's much less painful than a year ago. (It's still not quite healed, but that's a story for another post.)