But since I titled the previous post ‘Not Particularly Interesting’ and lots of you thought it was interesting and could relate to it, I can’t guarantee that this post is Very Interesting indeed.
Aaaanyway… hubs had ‘intake’ conversations with his surgeon and the anaesthesiologist (hey, typed that correctly in one go! At least Windows Live Writer doesn’t say that it doesn’t recognize the word, so it must be correct.) and they’ve drawn on a picture of what your inside looks like, what they will be removing from his inside. Man! I was shocked. About a quarter of his colon and lots of stuff around it. I thought they would just cut away the tumour and a little bit around it to make sure all the bad cells were gone, but no! They are going to have a ball with the knife in there.
And they will try to do it through laparoscopic surgery, also known as keyhole surgery. Which I thought was almost unbelievable, especially when you see what they want to remove. But in fact there will be multiple ‘keyholes’. Should however during this surgery become clear that multiple holes won’t be enough, they will do a – what I call – CSI on him. So cut him open from top to bottom, almost from the neck to where the male parts are. One big hole.
In fact, we had friends staying over this weekend, and she’s a veterinarian. When hubs told her about the laparoscopic plan, she couldn’t believe it either. “We just cut open the belly, take out the intestines, lay them out on the table and are very careful that the inside of the belly stays clean”, she explained. “But hey, I’m talking about fourleggers of course and I’m sure your surgeons know what they are doing”, she tried to reassure us.
We are hopeful the surgeons know what they are doing. They have mentioned that he could wake up with a stoma, temporarily or not. Small chance, but still something to consider. Oh, and if you are squeamish, look away now; they will remove a large part of his colon and have to make a new connection to his rectum, which they will do by inserting a stapler via – I don’t know another way to explain it – his backside and stapling the colon to the rectum again.
I know!
I will never look at a stapler in the same way again.
I’m not sure if hubs appreciates me telling you all these intimate details, but hey… just look at it as educational information.
Surgery will be next Wednesday.
