Grant and I have been up in the mountains due to the generosity of our friends, Julie and Dennis, and their loaning of their mountain house for the last couple days. I was recuperating so that I could actually have a voice with which to speak. He was getting some well-deserved downtime and recreation via skiing the Continental Divide. Our friend Michele came up on Friday to visit and ski too, which was lovely! There was so much snow, as well. Huge piles. The little dogs didn’t quite know what to do with it all. I took them for walks down the path, and even though my red blood cell count is low, and therefore my oxygenation is low, I didn’t have any problem feeling breathless at 9000 feet in elevation. So that’s good.
My intestinal situation hasn’t changed much. It is less painful (3.5 or 4 out of 10) but still there. At least there is more knowledge now about what is causing it. (See my last post if you haven’t been keeping up.) I found a listing from BC about how to deal with a partial bowel obstruction so I’ve mostly been having a liquid diet with a bit of low-fiber food. That pretty much throws my prescribed diet from the naturopathic oncologists on its head, but that’s what I gotta do for now.
We didn’t hear back from Dr. G’s gyn-onc team as we had expected, which we took to be no news equals good news. I made a call in this morning, as we knew that the on-call fellow, Dr. Sawyer, would be in. They are a little confounded as to why I have pain on my upper right quadrant of the abdomen when the known stricture is on the lower left quadrant of the abdomen, where I don’t have any pain at all. He said today it could just be general scar tissue and adhesions from having been opened up for the big surgery, even if there wasn’t active cutting in that particular area. Apparently that is a risk, that scar tissue or adhesions form just from the area being messed with.
In any case, I’m getting the impression Dr. G has been out of the office and they are waiting for him to get back tomorrow before deciding what to do. So, again, no news is good news, as it doesn’t seem like it’s an emergency for now. However if I stop passing gas then it turns into an emergency. So that’s what to watch for. I’ll be grateful to know what is going on and what to do about it, but I can deal for a little while longer. Mayo Clinic talks about it here. Sounds like surgery might be necessary. But I’ll wait to hear from Dr. G’s team tomorrow.
I decided today to try and clean myself out again using the polyethylene glycol (PEG) solution, but after four doses, nothing. That does not seem good to me. Maybe there’s just not much in there. Guess I’ll stick with the liquid diet, and wait to hear. I’ve been juicing with Grant’s old Champion Juicer, as well as having broths, so I can at least get some liquid carbs, fats, and proteins.
In the meantime, I’m hungry and I’m torturing myself watching America’s Test Kitchen video clips about excellent, wonderful, and tasty recipes I’d really love to try. They make every bite of a completed recipe sound just amazing with all their yummy sounds.
I got their latest cookbook which is a Mediterranean Diet book for the multicooker. First of all, it is a lovely book in its own right. And secondly, the first recipe I tried, Couscous with Chicken, Red Pepper and Fennel was AMAZING! Grant and I both agreed. (I just had a little and I chose it in the first place because it was okay on my low-fiber diet list.)
So I’m hoping for this whole intestinal situation to get resolved somehow so I can go back to eating good, solid, food!
Staying C-ful with the Big C 