RAMBLINGS OF A MIND UNTAMED

June
79 yr old.
Ivor lewis esophagectomy.
Difficulty swallowing for 18 months until she would have to "bang her chest" to help swallow the food.

She was ready to resign herself to the end but the surgeon convinced her she would have a better quality of life if she had the surgery (like, what was left of it).

She looked fairly spry for what she had done to her. But she also had an epidural infusion continuously running and it was day 3 now post op.

I was reading in the notes she had inquired about voluntary assisted dying and said that should anything have gone wrong in the surgery then she'd like to be "let go".

Married for a billion years but her husband was just scared of anything medical. He said he watched them do some procedure to her once and she bled a tiny bit and he fainted on the spot.

He baulked when I said I was going to flush the PEG (feeding tube from outside into the stomach. I didn't even have to expose her I was going to use a side port.

Lols. Oh dear.

I shed a few tears when they started talking about having an orange juice and walking along a beach together.

Aw. It's the small things really.
The 42 year old
Had normal bowels once daily until she didn't. And started getting constipated. The GP noticed she had low Iron and put her on iron tabs (I don't know how that would have like. solved the constipation, but perhaps it would have masked it - like "oh. I'm constipated because of the iron tabs, not because of the potential cancer in my bowel I don't know I have") - and then she would sit (shes only a little lady, tall and 50kg) but could feel like there was a ball in her butt -- that's how damn big it was - went for an ultrasound and they did some colonoscopy shortly at Blacktown. A whole year later from when the constipation started.

Then now after chemo and reactions to the drugs and it's not going well - and burns from the radiation she's had to have our blue ICU special : pelvic exanteration.

Maybe her's will be ok because it didn't seem like, as bad as some of the others. They literally took out her rectum, resected her bowel, she had a stoma (but I'm not sure if that wasn't put in earlier) and they also had to remove her vagina: the tumour from her bowel was pressing into her vaginal wall - and I think it had actually invaded it.

They seemed to have thought about reconstructing the vagina but -- for some reason that idea was aborted. She's 42. and has a 7 year old.

Ok forget the reconstruction, even if they do reconstruct it - your going to loose all of that original sensitive tissue anyway? No?

In anycase she was in a world of pain and spent most of the day crying about her situation - fearful of the ward she was about to be transferred to (lack of staffing was her main issue) and sad her stoma wasn't functioning because she had a ileus. Lots of NG output. Green.

Meanwhile in my preparation for the big SJA Easter show that I finally have the time to do now that May2 is 1 year old - I tried on my old uniform. I remember when those pants were so loose I had to do up the belt super tight and now I can just barely button them. After Wendy they were firm but okay. But after May2 I'm like stuffed.

Sighs.
Well. Uniforms don't lie. I suppose that's their benefit. Things can't creep up on you because you can't just move onto a stretchier fabric.