My Cancer Scare

It was a difficult summer of 2015 here on the farm...

As if being in a wheelchair with severe Multiple Sclerosis wasn't enough for me to deal with, a routine screening test suggested I might have had rectal cancer, and indeed I did. One tiny spot, caught very early and self-contained. I called a surgeon I've known for years and we scheduled a time to get it snipped out.

Surgery went well, I was declared cancer free, and I was home in just a few days.

I'd been home 3 days, when I sneezed one afternoon and blew apart where the two ends of colon had been rejoined. (The doc's call this an anastomosis).This of course filled my abdomen with fecal matter, causing a huge mess to clean out, and now a massive infection to treat! After the sneeze, we went right back to the hospital, it was only an hour before I was back under the knife.

The second operation got me flushed out and also made me the proud owner of a colostomy, which will  be permanent.

To this old engineer turned goat herder, it wasn't a problem. It's just plumbing and I'm still alive so all is well.

It didn't end there though.. A day before my second discharge, the hospital physical therapist wanted me out of bed and into a chair. OK, I managed that with some help. An hour later he came back to help me back to bed. I stood up from the chair, and in standing, ruptured my insides yet again, with my surgical incision opening up and me ending up holding my intestines in my hands!.

Staff tossed me back on my bed and wheeled me straight back to the operating theatre.

Third time was the charm for getting everything back together and in working order, though my surgeon told me my heart stopped more than once while he was cleaning me out again..

Let me tell you about God being in the details. During that 3rd surgery, my surgeon discovered that during my original colonoscopy, that doctor had poked 7 different holes in both my large and small intestines! He had been in a hurry to get my procedure done and over with for reasons I never learned.

If I had not had that 3rd surgery, I'd have gone home, leaked fecal matter into my abdomen and likely died from a massive infection! It took that 3rd surgery, where all of my intestines were taken out and dropped into a bucket that the damage was noticed!

My now mid-transverse colostomy was working but this time I ended up in a coma. I was partially awake, but could not identify my wife, dad, pastor, my own name etcetera. My wife and staff said the only words I managed to utter for 3 days was, "I'm sorry"

While the cause of the coma is still being debated, I came out of it completely after I was given an injection of my M.S. drug that I'd been off of for 3 weeks. I was unaware I wasn't getting it with all the other jabs during my stay. My insurance company didn't want to send doses to the hospital for some reason (the drug is over $1400 a dose) and nobody told me. It's 'a powerful drug, one that you just can't stop taking! It was my dad, who had flown down to help support my wife and son, who went to my house, picked up a dose of my M.S drug  and took it to the hospital and insisted that they give it to me. Thanks dad!

So after a month in the hospital then a couple of months sleeping in my own bed with a vacuum dressing to suck out the remaining infection, and my bride giving me IV drips and changing dressings. (I'm gutted like a fish!) I'm feeling back to my old self.

In my final appointment with my Hindu surgeon, he said flat out I and my family must pray to a powerful God, because it was faith in God that kept me alive, he said I was really too sick to survive otherwise. Thank you Jesus! What got me through all of the above? I'm a person of faith, so lots of prayers from family and friends of course.  My bride at my side, and my cheap Dell laptop running Linux Mint so that I could see my goats and read my favorite Linux blogs!

The worst part of my recovery happened in late August, when my prized goat Molly, woke me up at 4am in pain. Turned out she had cancer too. Sadly, she did not survive her surgery however, and losing her really hit me hard. Getting new goats became a priority for my own sanity. You can read Molly's entire story HERE

It's been years since all that happened, but I remain healthy, and stay active with my goats, wife, profoundly autistic adult son, mowing lawns for free in the summer for disabled veterans and widows in my neighborhood, and teaching Bible studies.

Thanks for reading, and if you need counciling about a pending or current colostomy, let me know!