Had the surgery 2/19 to remove the entire sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes.

Was in recovery 2/19 to 2/23 and released to go home!

The biopsy results came in late today and confirmed 0/12 lymph nodes were malignant. That’s it! It’s clean! No stage 3, no chemo required!

Follow up with the surgeon on 4/1 to talk about where we go from here, my guess is colonoscopies 2x a year for life now since it went from 0 to stage 2 in 6 months.

March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, wear blue and get checked!

#✅UR:

Not sure when I’ll be back modding, I still feel like someone slammed me in the gut with a baseball bat. Cricket bat for our international folks! Maybe another 2-3 weeks.

I still lurk and comment occasionally, just as my health allows!

Edit Bonus - Since my wife had her own medical event this year involving a massive infection, spinal intrusion and below knee amputation, we already hit the out of pocket maximum on our insurance for the year.

Sooo…

Get insurance guys, no, seriously, get insurance.

  • Bonesince1997@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 month ago

    Wonderful news! Sorry to hear about your wife’s issues though. It sounds like you guys have been through it! Hope it’s calmer for you both now. Speedy recovery.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 month ago

    Glad to hear you’re cancer free! My father in law just had colon cancer removed a few days ago and we’re awaiting the biopsy results. Seriously: get checked, people!

  • vatlark@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    So glad it was found early. Take time to heal and care for each other. That sounds really rough.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    Nice!

    Obviously you don’t have to answer since it’s personal, but I am curious: How does that effect your digestion? I always kinda wonder how much intestine you really need, because apparently it’s not all of it.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      31·
      1 month ago

      The colon is all about pulling water out of your stool to make poop, well… poop!

      The sigmoid colon is the last line of that process. So without it, poop will still be poop, but maybe not necessarily as firm as it would be with it.

      In my case, that works to my advantage, because I take statin drugs and statin drugs make me miserable. Having slightly looser stool might actually make me normal for a change!

  • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    That is really great news! Hope you heal well and minimal pain. Best wishes to the both of you for a rapid end to this health rollercoaster and a smooth slide into your healthy new normal.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Congrats, Jordan! Take as much time as you need. If things get out of hand here, there’ll always be people ready to help.

  • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Hey, glad to hear you’re doing better, even though the long term outlook isn’t the rosiest. Gastro surgery can be rough, and pain can impede the healing process so make sure to take care of yourself and take it easy.

    Do you have family in the area (besides your wife, who you mention is also ill) that you can rely on right now? Not to scare you, but If I remember it took about 6 weeks to three months to recover from the more major gastro surgeries I had (I got complications though). Sigmoidectomy is pretty major. Normal (heh what’s that) might be sooner if you got laproscopic but I am a layperson.

    Let me know if you need any Ilex or calmoseptine or don’t know what they are (you will likely need both as your gut adjusts to its new length)

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      21·
      1 month ago

      My pain scale is marred by other things I’ve had so this really is barely registering. If I peg the 10 at “Spinal Stenosis”, so far this is like a 6, currently a 4. I didn’t even need the oxy today except to go to sleep.

      And yeah, was laparoscopic, so I have 4 small incision sites instead of one giant one like with the open heart surgery.

      As far as other gastro problems go, I was pretty screwed up by the statins they put me on for the heart stuff. So being a little more “loose” than normal is nice compared to that:

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3291011/

      Hopefully the two will balance each other out!