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.)

Still Life with Leg Wound

I took this photo today. I dug up my first potatoes (ever!) and got so excited that I forgot how much my leg was aching. I got out the camera for a little shot with the ruler, cuke, and first spuds, and threw my leg in there at the last moment. For more pix of the potatoes, click here.

Latest Leg Photo

It has now been ten weeks since my leg surgery. The surgical wound is still not quite healed. Here's a photo I took this morning. (Click here for others.)

On August 20, Dr. Jacobs gave me permission to resume swimming and even dancing. It was the best news I'd heard in a million years.

I still have to use the Normatec device for several hours every day. Each time I use it, even for just half an hour, more stuff oozes out of the surgical wound on my leg. This weirds me out a little, but I take my cues from the doctors I trust, and if they're not worried, then I try not to worry either.

No worries. :-)

Halleluyah, Praise the Lord, I Can Drive

I was stuck for a ride to this morning's physical-therapy appointment, so I decided to try driving my own car. This was the first time I've tried to drive a stick-shift since my leg surgery.

(Giant Thank You to William Pike for swapping me his automatic car for two weeks last month, and also to Tom Luongo for the same favor for a few days last week.)

This morning was a good time for such a test: not rush hour, not far, not new, not late enough in the day for my ankle to have swelled too much in advance. (Even better timing would have been on a less humid day and under less time pressure.)

Although my ankle hurt during the appointment, undoubtedly from driving my car, the convenience of being able to provide my own transportation felt nothing less than miraculous.
After I was done shouting Halleluyah I recited the She-heHeyanu. And when I got home I took heavier pain and swelling meds than usual, and rushed my leg back into the Machine for a little while.

The Hebrew word "Halleluyah" really does mean "Praise the Lord." Hallelu is the plural imperative form of the verb to praise, and Yah is one of Gd's many Hebrew names. Praise Gd, Y'all.

Bowel Blockage

Ouch, today I'm suffering from a bowel blockage. It is excruciating. This one has been going on since about 7 AM. It's very serious, actually life-threatening. But I'm afraid to go to the ER because the first thing they'll do is pump my stomach using the dreaded NG (nasal-gastric) tube. I'd almost rather die than submit to that again. My rule of thumb is that if the blockage goes on for more than 24 hours, I promise to find a ride to the ER. Fortunately this blockage seems headed for self-resolution before the 24-hour mark, which means I have once again successfully avoided the ER.

This can happen to anyone, including people with full, normal, functioning digestive tracts, but I never had it before I lost my colon. I've learned that there's so much more room in my lower torso minus that large organ that there's now space in which my small intestine can get kinked and twisted. This is why people who've had complete colectomies get bowel blockages more often.

This is the first one I've had since my leg surgery. Thank goodness I can walk enough to do some of the right things for the blockage, like heat up the Bed Buddy in the microwave for applying heat to my mid-section, and carry it into the other room where I can lie down on the couch. I also made hot, sweetened tea for slow sipping. I couldn't have done any of this by myself during the first two weeks after the leg surgery. Thank Gd it didn't happen then!

One of the other blockage-management tools is to take a hot bath, but I'm not allowed to immerse my leg yet, so that option was out.

What caused this particular blockage? Must be something I ate. Most likely it was those innocent-seeming beets I polished off yesterday evening. When will I ever learn: Do not eat beets after 1 PM, Natasha! Or, if I must, at least eat them in tiny quantities only. Hard to remember when I love them so much.

Imagine Feeling Like Yourself Again

So, get this: Dr. Jacobs wants me to bring my cowboy boots to my next Normatec appointment! With appropriate socks and everything!!! Of course, I had to wonder, aloud, which cowboy boots? The red ones? The green ones? The black ones? (I didn't even mention the original brown ones, or the Dan-Post multicolored ones, or the blue ropers.) Hm, I'm thinking maybe the red ones. Nurse Mary said she wants to see the whole outfit.

Well, the Normatec brochure does say, right up front: "Imagine feeling like yourself again."

My First Squat Toilet

[This is my first posting about guts.]

The first place I ever saw a squat toilet was in Tokyo. In the airport bathroom, May, 1982. Long rows of stalls in the women's room, just like in any American airport bathroom. But each stall door had a label, either "Western toilet" or "non-Western toilet." If I remember correctly, there were about equal numbers of each! I was seventeen years old, had never heard of squatting or anything. I was overcome with curiosity about what a non-Western toilet could possibly be and peeked behind one of those doors to find out. A single glance at a white porcelain flat thing on the floor was enough to scare me and I fled to a Western toilet. (I had just been diagnosed with colitis the year before; I think my bowel problems were beginning to affect me by this point in time.)

Eleven years later, somewhere in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, I finally used a squat toilet for the first time in my life, and it wasn't by choice. In colitis-related desperation I had found myself in a really icky, dirty, rural, impoverished dark place, with a flushable hole in the ground and a bucket of water, to which I had been ushered by a non-French-speaking Moroccan man. I remember being worried about germs, infection, disease, kidnapping, etc. So imagine my surprise when, upon "relieving myself" there, I found myself thinking: "Wow, that was so much easier and less painful than on the toilets at home!"