Month: February 2025

As I write this, there are just five days to go until my surgery. Also, I have two black circles, drawn in permanent marker, on my tummy. They’re a short distance from my navel and covered with a sort of transparent medical sticker. These circles are potential places for my ostomy, and they were put there during a big pre-op meeting I had at the hospital earlier this week. So, while I count down the days, I also have this to continually remind me of what’s next.

(One circle is just above the other, like this : and I was saying to Lori that there’s a ‘colon’ joke in there somewhere. I just haven’t figured it out yet)

So yes, we met with various folks at the hospital in Winnipeg about what’s coming. There was the usual re-checking of my vitals as well as weight and height. There was a questionnaire about my general health. Side note: I love that they keep re-checking my height. I feel like, at 42, I’ve done about all the growing I’m gonna do. (I’m sure when Lori proofreads this post she’ll tell me why it’s necessary). We also met the NSWOC or Nurse Specialized in Wound, Ostomy, and Continence. She was very positive and understanding, and walked us through what life would be like on the other side of surgery. I’ll get a lot of ‘in-house’ training in the days after surgery, and afterward some visits at home by a home care nurse.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about life with a colostomy in the weeks to come. The NSWOC also added, as an aside to Lori, that maybe she’d be willing to learn these care procedures as well, in time. We grinned at each other, because, well, Lori already handles this kind of thing professionally. As a home care nurse! But, we’d agreed at the outset of this journey to keep her status as a medical professional quiet. We certainly aren’t going to lie, but for the most part there’s been no need for it to come up, either. When she’s in the room with me for a meeting or consultation she wants to be my wife first, and not accidentally change the way we’re spoken to or dealt with.

(I have some experience on the other side of this scenario, from when we went into the hospital for Lori to have our babies; at the time, the other nurses were her co-workers, so they tended to slip into work lingo with one another and leave me completely out of the loop with what was going on)

After the NSWOC we met the anaesthetist, who got more into the mechanics of the surgery itself and what they’d be doing to knock me out. I’m talking in sort of a casual, offhand way about these meetings but the truth is that I was pretty tense for good chunks of them; obviously all of this was a lot to process (how many times have I said that in the past ten months?) and some of the information I could barely face directly.

So. Things are more-or-less in place for this coming Thursday. I’m feeling calm-ish, but also sighing heavily every few minutes because I’m thinking too far ahead and trying to reset and come back to the present.

I want to take this moment to once again thank everyone who goes out of their way to comment on the blog, whether online or in-person; thank you all for the encouragement you’ve offered. Kindly spare a prayer or a thought for me as I embark upon this difficult leg of the journey, and please do the same for my family as they support me and we all try to figure out life after surgery.

Oh, and uh, don’t expect a blog entry next week.

As I write this there are eleven days remaining until my surgery. I’ve been preparing by reading materials from the Manitoba Ostomy Program, which addressed a lot of common questions and went over daily life in a plain, matter-of-fact kind of way. I’ve also been preparing by downloading movies and TV shows at 4 a.m., because I had a nasty head cold and couldn’t sleep. I’ve had at least one moment of total, overwhelming “I can’t do this” while emptying the cat’s litter tray. And we’ve been making logistical preparations for the kids and the dog.

(I’ve just realized that there’s an entire day where nobody is looking in on the cat. I better get that sorted!)

It isn’t the only thing on our minds but it’s also never far away. As with other times in this journey, I’m trying to focus on the things I can control, and stay present for the other moments of my life. This journal actually makes that slightly more difficult — while outdoors with my kids this afternoon, I kept falling into a mental loop. It went like this:

1. “Whoops, my mind’s wandering, but it’s probably better to pay attention and stay present for their fun and enrichment.”
2. “Hm, what if I wrote about that struggle in my journal later? I could say…”
3. [return to 1]

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The CancerCare Manitoba Foundation donation blitz that used my story and pictures seems to have wound down. (That link probably won’t feature me forever, so if you’re reading this in the future it likely doesn’t feature me anymore. But right now it does!) Overall, I’m happy with the experience; they made good use of what I supplied and were very attentive to our feedback on drafts of the fundraising emails. Because I am on the CCMB mailing list already, I was also part of of the mass-mailing of my own story; it was a little funny to get messages like this:

Other opportunities to help the Foundation may come along in the future and I’ll definitely consider them as they arise. Right now, it’s a little tough to think beyond this month. I keep saying I want to help the next person with a diagnosis, but what I’m specifically thinking of is…medicated wipes. When I was undergoing radiation treatments last summer, trips to the bathroom became very painful. Some of the discomfort was mitigated by these nice medicated wipes that the radiation techs started giving me before I’d head home. They weren’t stingy with the packages either; I’d get a couple every time I asked.

Look, it’s minor and might sound silly, but it was a way that helped me feel like I mattered to the folks looking after my treatments. It was something above-and-beyond the reason I was there each day. The Foundation talks a lot about your donations funding research in the province, and that’s great! But I also know those packages of wipes have got to come from somewhere too. Someone somewhere paid for them, and I was very grateful to get them for free to make my own journey a little easier.

So, if my story gets someone to chip in even a few bucks, and those few bucks turn into a package of wipes that makes someone else’s journey easier — I’m all for it.

What a week!

On Monday I got a call from my surgeon’s office, wondering why my Sigmoidoscopy was so late in the month. “The endoscopy people said February 18th was the next available date,” I said. That’s too late, I was told. We have February 20th set aside as your surgery date.

Whoa, okay. That was news to me. The person on the phone said they’d see what they could do about moving it up.

Tuesday, they phoned back. Could I possibly get to the Victoria General Hospital in Winnipeg at 7:15 a.m. Friday? Well, back in the beginning of this whole journey, Lori and I made an agreement that we would Make Whatever Work and that I should accept dates as they come, even if I’m not quite sure. So I said yes, fine.

And so, Thursday night, I said goodnight to the kids and my wife and hopped in the car to drive to a motel in Winnipeg. (Yes, I have family in the city who are probably reading this, but to my knowledge none of you are very conveniently close to that hospital, and anyway, I had some preparations to make that I didn’t want to do in someone else’s home.) I’ve booked and checked into hotels plenty of times in my adult life but I realized that this is actually the first time I’ve ever done it alone. I’ve always been with someone else when I’ve travelled overnight, OR I’ve been on a bus and just slept in transit. The quiet in my room was unnerving. I kept the TV on for the noise.

Early the next morning I made my preparations and then made my way to the hospital. Sedation is optional for a sigmoidoscopy and I chose not to have it, on the grounds that I didn’t have anyone to drive me afterward so I couldn’t have sedation anyway. It was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, and then I was being wheeled into the room. Suffice it to say that the procedure was very uncomfortable but mercifully brief. Then, while I was still collecting myself, my future surgeon hit me with the rest.

• The CT showed the cancer hasn’t spread (hooray!!) but there is a lymph node in the region that’s concerning.
• The MRI showed an “incomplete” response to treatments, which sounds bad but just means the treatments didn’t completely eliminate the cancer on their own. It’s common.
• The scope that was just done confirmed that my cancer is, still, sitting right next to the *ahem* ‘exit muscle’. So the whole thing’s got to come out and get closed up. They’ll also take out that troublesome lymph node I guess.
• So it’s confirmed: I’m getting a permanent ostomy in just a couple of weeks.

Then he rattled off a series of potential complications from the surgery, and while I was still reeling from all this information I had a consent form dropped into my lap to authorize that I wanted the procedure done. I was stunned. I mean, I’ve said all along that if this surgery is what’s required to continue living, I’m going to do it, but it’s another thing to have it go from hypothetical to reality. I would have really wanted a minute to just sit with the decision, but I really, I was always going to sign the paper. So, I did.

I was promptly wheeled back out so I could get dressed again, wait for the scope report to print, and have a cry while I texted Lori updates. It was a heavy time.

So, that’s happening. I expect to get more details soon about surgery prep, and of course Lori and I have to figure out family logistics for the 4-5 days I’ll be in hospital. I’ve written before about being unable to really think or learn about life with a colostomy bag, but by degrees since Friday I’ve been having more questions and getting acquainted with the idea. We also had a good chat with Cassidy so that she had plenty of time to come up with questions or concerns of her own, which she has. Her processing has helped my own as well.

Relatedly, something about me is that I tend to get stuck on a particular image or idea for weeks or months at a time, like when I couldn’t stop thinking about the Mad Men intro. It’s not that I’m constantly obsessing, it’s just a thing that my brain will drift toward when I’m bored or have an idle moment. Lately it’s been retro video games. It’s no secret that I love games, and I enjoy keeping up with modern ones (the new Indiana Jones game is great!) But when I’ve been unable to play for a period of time I start fervently wishing I was in front of my old CRT TV playing PlayStation or something. The picture above was taken at home after returning from my trip to Winnipeg on Friday — I needed, just for a little while, to play something familiar and comforting.

So that’s obviously a part of why this idea appeals so much — I’m treading through so much unfamiliar territory in my life that it makes sense I’d be drawn to something where I have control of what’s going on. I’m also pretty sure that it appeals to me because the time in my life when “Retro” was “Brand New” — i.e., the mid-90s-to-early-00’s — seems so much simpler in retrospect. Go to class, see my friends, come home and relax in the warm glow of a tube TV and Final Fantasy IX or A Link To The Past. I know I’m never going to get that back, and I thought I was at peace with that. Maybe I’m not, or maybe every previous chapter of your life seems less complicated than your current one.

Still, I read a great post the other day by a terminally ill person saying that you don’t actually have to stare at the horrors in your life all the time. Confront them as necessary, but make sure that between those times you are improving your own life or the lives of those around you. So that’s why it gives me so much joy to look at this picture I took, on Saturday, of Avery feeding my Dad’s neighbor dogs: