Forum Discussion
Memories
Yesterday I had major abdominal surgery in the same operating theatre where I had my lumpectomy on 12 November 2015. The experience brought back all sorts of memories of that time. I still find it strange I am tackling a whole new disease now just 3 years later. Breast cancer has been overtaken by Achalasia. Surprisingly, despite surgery, chemo, radiation and targeted therapy Breast Cancer seems to have had less of an impact on my life or maybe I am not remembering all that bad stuff. Still, I am extremely lucky. October mammogram was clear and while I'll never be cured of Achalasia, I have a new stomach and am slowly learning to swallow fluids again. Catching Achalasia early also improves my long term chances of keeping my oesophagus. I caught my breast cancer early too. So that's two for two now. Awareness matters. Eight more weeks of soft food and then hopefully I'll be able to eat solid food again. Hope everyone is well as can be and wishing you all the best for the holiday season.
Nadine
Nadine
29 Replies
- @sister that's right. Make up some story about being in a knife fight. They certainly look like 5 small stab wounds. Reckon I could get away with that!! Just kidding, that's not really me. They will fade in time. I hardly notice my breast cancer scar. My portacath scar is the worst because it went all keloid on me.
- If people ever ask about your scars @nadi you can allude to a mysterious past.
- Best wishes @Nadi you've certainly earned those bad a*** scars !!
Take care
Hugs xx - Woo hoo! No place like home to recuperate!
Take care - Thanks @iserbrown I am doing ok. I was discharged this morning. Yay! Have a month off work to recover. I have five new scars from the surgery, adding to my breast cancer surgery scar and my portacath scar. Hubby says they make me look bad a**.
@arpie I'll send you a PM about another side effect. - @Nadi
I know it's early days but just checking to make sure you are Okay!
Take care, Hugs - Hi @Nadi, good to hear from you and very best wishes for your recovery. Weird about all those cooking shows - I remember going through chemo and it seemed like every time I sat down to watch something on the tele there'd be another cooking show on, when you least felt like eating or thinking about the smells of cooking! Hope you enjoy that first solid meal when it eventually happens xx
- Yes, some of those 'liquid meals' are just so sickly sweet and difficult to 'stomach'. Yes, it will take very little of anything to make you feel full.
You are very much in the early days just now - and they have to make sure that everything 'goes thru to the other end OK' before allowing you to have more solid food, even custard or yoghurt - which will make you feel even MORE full.
I have a photo of hubby having his first taste of 'real food' whilst still in hospital! The look on his face is hilarious.
Yes, Make haste slowly. Hubby lost 3/4 of his stomach. 6 months later, he was eating whatever he wanted!
Take care xxxx - @arpie slow and steady is the key, but it's also the hardest thing to do. Most of my fluids come from the IV. I can only take 5 mls of liquid every 5 minutes at the moment. A cup of black tea with sugar takes me an hour and a half to drink. They are giving me nutricia fortijuice - same stuff for stomach cancer and gastric bypass patients, but I just can't get it down. Last night I had one dessert spoon of jelly and it was like christmas - I was stuffed. The surgery had complications. They ended up stitching my stomach to my diaphragm as the muscles were so weak and they didn't have enough upper stomach to do the fundoplication so they had to take more of the mid section to achieve the wrap. In the end I lost about 25% of my stomach. I guess I'll get used to it going forward. The best part is that I am not hungry. But watching tele while you're in hospital means you're bombarded with cooking shows (seriously - there are stacks of them!) so the psychological desire to eat is hard to deal with.
