Dale’s co-pilot

This is my first entry to Dale’s journal. I am Marcia, his wife and adoring fan. I will be keeping you up to date on his progress after surgery . I’m not a writer but this is really important to both of us so here goes…:)

Well it’s FINALLY D-day!!! I can’t say that I’m not nervous, but we’ve been waiting for this moment since March 9th when Dale got the diagnosis… I m so very proud of him, he has walked through this journey with unwavering determination to beat this. He has suffered through the chemo and radiation with hardly a complaint to me or his kids… The surgery will be at least 3-4 hours long starting at 1:30 this afternoon. The positive thing is that they can use his port to access IV’s and blood draws (last time they couldn’t find a vein and ended up sticking him three times before putting the IV in a precarious position by his thumb). I will do my best to write again tomorrow to let you all know how the surgery went and how he’s doing. Thanks so much for your love and support it means so much to Dale and I.

Love, Marcia

Surgery Tomorrow

Wow. I didnt’ realize it had that long since I posted an entry. This past weekend was really rough (as was today) because the nausea hit me extremely hard, then the rectal pain. Saturday was a blur because I spent most of the day laying on the couch.

But tomorrow’s the day I’ve been looking foward to. I have to be at the hospital at 11:30, and the surgery is scheduled for 1:30. Wish me luck!

Met With Surgeon

We met with Dr. Anderson this morning, the surgeon who will perform the surgery on me on June 20th. He asked how I’ve been feeling and I said I felt pretty good and that I turned the corner with the rectal pain I’ve been having. He then said that after surgery, the rectal pain will get worse, and instead of coming and going, it will be fairly constant for 4 to 6 weeks. Ouch. He said it was because once he removes part of the colon, there will be exposed nerve endings in the region where the radiation was applied and that those side effects will start all over again.

But he did say that once I get past this set of side effects, the rectal pain will go away permanently. Can’t wait. Even though I haven’t taken any prescription pain medication so far, he said that will change because I’ll need to manage the pain so that I can heal better. Oh well, it’s part and parcel of what this trip is about and I need to look at where I’m going to be by the end of the year, and that’s cancer free!

Quick Update

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted and I apologize for that, but I got tired of writing about the pain quite frankly, and it (the pain) was wearing me down quite a bit. It feels like I’ve turned the corner finally because I haven’t had any significant rectal pain for a couple of days now. It’s still there, but I’ve accepted the fact that I’m going to be living with some sort of pain the rest of my life and I just have to deal with it. I had a bout of nausea today for some odd reason, but it only lasted about an hour or so.

Something strange last week as well. Whenever I put my head down, and lifted back up, I was completely dizzy for about a minute or so. I came home that afternoon and bent down to pick something up from underneath the couch and when I got up, I felt like I was drunk, and I was stumbling around trying to find a wall. Only lasted about a minute, but it scared me. Called the doc and they said I’m probably dehydrated, but I’m still pounding down the water, so that doesn’t make sense.

16 days until surgery and I’m chompin’ at the bit to have it.