6:15am...home again...7:30am and I am having a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios...just because I can before 8am. I know...it's not on the cancer diet....but, dang it, I deserve something special before this surgery and this is as good as it gets!
11:00am...had my last sip of water before heading for Rapid City. My check-in time is 12:30pm.
11:15am...on the road to Rapid. It's snowing and blowing and Interstate 90 is snow covered and slick. We left early for the 45 minute drive cuz of bad conditions. Actually, the roads improved the closer we got to Rapid City. We arrived a bit early at Rapid City Regional Hospital and admissions sent me straight away to the lab to draw some blood. Then, up to the second floor waiting room where Denise and my daughter, Delana, were waiting. If you ever have surgery and your significant other is planning on waiting it out, be real sure he/she has someone to wait with. I was so thankful that my daughter was there to take some of the weight off my wife. It makes time pass so much faster with someone to talk to and you worry a whole lot less.
My wait, on the other hand, was not long at all and soon I was in the pre-op room in a backless gown on a gurney. I had to go through the usual process of identification, health questions, food questions, water intake questions, and questioning questions before they would allow my wife and daughter to come back and sit with me...one final visit ya know...there's always a risk with anesthesia that you could die. I had asked for a shot to calm my nerves cuz I gotta tell ya, man, Cyclops (the monstrous, one-eyed cave-dweller) was scared shitless and was hiding his head. Besides that, my feet, fingers, and toes were keeping beat to nonexistent music. Not knowing quite what to expect is very disconcerting. All I had been told is that they use a scope to go up your urethra into your bladder and start cutting away at the tumor and resecting it out through the urethra until they have removed as much as they feel safe removing without cutting into the bladder lining. A wrong cut and I could be looking at getting an incision in my abdomen to go in and sew up my bladder-boo-boo. I had questions I wanted to ask Dr. Christiansen before surgery...like: Why can't they do a resection where they remove a section of the bladder where the tumor is and sew it up again?...but they all fled my mind due to nerves. I never got the shot I wanted until I was back in the operating room and I don't remember a whole lot after that until recovery.
In the recovery room, I had been told that I would have to hold this chemo-medication in my bladder for an hour and the doctor told me it would be hard to do. I don't remember any of that time. My wife and daughter joined me in recovery and the nurse said that I had to pee before I could go home. So, I started chugging glasses of water. Approximately 45 minutes later, we were free to leave. The doctor told my wife that the tumor was on a stem (the easiest to remove) and he felt confident he got 100% of the tumor. However, we would have to wait several days for the pathologists report before he could advise me on follow-up and future treatments if any. Back to the waiting game and back on my diet and cancer protocols.
I was very relieved to have this part of this ordeal over with. Surgery is always somewhat frightening because it is an unknown. I have had more surgeries then I care to recall...thirteen I believe...and this one was no easier than the first one. That fear that you may not come out of the anesthesia, or you might get a bad infection afterwards, or any of the other "ifs" associated with surgery are unknown factors that rattle around in your head and become disconcerting. Even though I had Jesus' reassurance that He would be with me the whole time, our human side tries to keep control and authority with its unreasonable doubts and fears. The "Fight or Flight" instinct we have is thrown helter-skelter because you know you should flee...but you know you can't...so, you should fight...but there's nothing to fight but fear...it's like Catch 21. In reality, the worst that could happen to me would have been to die...and that's going home...and that's good...actually, that's the best!
I'm not sure why I am going through this cancer trial. I know I will come out the other side much stronger than I am now. Perhaps this journal/blog will help just one cancer patient and ease their fears or give them hope for a bright future...I don't know. Perhaps it was a warning from Jesus that I really need to fight cancer on a cellular level because of my families cancer history. Maybe I'm full of cancerous cells just waiting to attack or I may have other tumors that simply haven't been found yet...I don't know. Maybe I am an example to my wife and children...a warning...wake up! It might be you next! Quit smoking! Quit eating rare meat! Don't eat bottom feeders! Eat organic or not at all and start a garden so you have fresh produce in the summer at least...I don't know.
I am sure that Jesus will make it clear to me, as time goes by, what the final objective has been all along. Right now, I feel blessed that I have a fantastic support group of family and friends who are willing to help me through each phase of this journey. Like my daughter being their for Denise and my other daughter, Deana, shoveling sidewalks and doing other errands while I'm laid up for the next two weeks. I'm very, very blessed...and very, very happy. Thank you Lord...Amen.
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