I had a great appointment with my Surgeon, Dr. Cagir (that's him on the left), his Nurse Practitioner, Nan Walsh as well the hospitals ostomy Nurse. Dr. Cagir was pulled into emergency surgery 10 minutes before my appointment, so I met with Nan and Sue. Nan said my body is healed from the surgery and responding beautifully. That being said, my second concern was the possibility of being able to irrigate on a daily basis.[Reminder: to irrigate is to take a warm water enema every 24 - 48 hours which flushes out the large intestine thus allowing the individual to go without a pouch [sweet!] and instead simply wear a large bandage.]
Nan did request that I speak to Cagir to confirm that irrigation is a possibility, yet she did read the surgery report which stated that I do have enough remaining large intestine to be a candidate for the possibility to irrigate. Yes, only the possibility. It can take one to two years of irrigation on a daily basis to train the large intestine to void once every 24 - 48 hours. And it doesn't stop there. I will then have to irrigate once a day for an hour in order to keep the large intestine trained. And I am fully committed to taking it on.
Sue then followed up with a visual of the necessary equipment used to irrigate and showed me how long and exactly how the process works. Very simple and very similar to the coffee enemas I did while on Gerson Therapy.
Considering I am a young man with lots of life to look forward to, a one to two year wait for the desired results, is a drop in the bucket if daily irrigation will provide me the freedom from wearing a pouch on a daily basis. Hell, I'd even wear a pouch for years if I had a damn near guarantee that it would stay empty until the next morning. And, of course, the large bandage would be ideal.
After my meeting with Nan and Sue, I caught Dr. Cagir on the way out of my appointment (and gave him a big hug - love the guy) and he said I will need to wait until 14-days after chemotherapy is over (in March of aught-9) before initiating daily irrigation. Regular chemotherapy treatments apparently causes consistent irregularity of the large intestine and irrigating would therefore be a waste of time.
He also thanked me for giving him a copy of my Letters to the Prison City CD and suggested I call it Prisons of Cagir. He's a nut. Today's meeting was great. I am very pleased with my new possibility.
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Bert, that's awesome. You are amazing, man. I read your blog at work sometimes (sorry employer-man) and every time i'm always blown away by yr courage and determination to maintain the best possible positive attitude in the face of the most daunting information. I mean this with the utmost sincerity: it's inspiring, man. seriously. It just makes me proud in the sense that you remind me that we all have the ability to rise up and face whatever adversity comes at us just by virtue of having a Mind that can decide how to perceive events. awesome. thank you.
ReplyDeleteI like that the Reverend used the word "proud". I felt that too but didn't know why... It's that you remind us how beautiful we humans can be. Thank you for that.
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