I'm not a morning person. If I had my druthers, I'd sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon and stay up all night. So when the alarm went off at 5:30 to get ready to go the surgery center, I had one of those 'Whoa is me' moments. I snapped out of it pretty quickly, but it still sucks. Most people my age aren't waking up to take their wives to the surgery center for the First Annual Colonoscopy. At the same time, it provided me with a bit of perspective that I always need when I start feeling that way. It could be a whole lot worse. As I walked back from grabbing coffee this morning, there was an amazing sunrise over San Jose. There was too much urban blight (freeways, light posts, traffic) to grab a decent photo with the camera phone, but the cloud cover was under the mountain tops and the sun came through the splits in the mountains and provided a really pretty backdrop to an odd morning. It is weird to be blogging while Holly is in surgery. Everyone is sure that things are clear. That this is routine. Just making sure. But that is what they said last time we were here and we all know how that ended. So we wait. I should get results on the scope in about 30 minutes. We get the results of the PT scan tomorrow afternoon. Like our friend Beth at YouTumor said, it isn't the tests that we fear, it is the results. So the waiting game is on. I hope that the surgeon is more of a morning person than I am. 5 Things I'm Happy About: Best surgeon in the area working on my wife Good insurance covers an expensive operation for $60 Good job provides good insurance Kids are with grandpa having an awesome time It is February and it has been in the 70's and sunny the past week and a half P.S. I just realized that my writing is pretty terrible until after lunch.

It's Port Day!!! Holly is in surgery now. I was going to hang around, but with 2 gossip magazines and Regis on in the waiting room, I was playing 4th fiddle and not really needed. It's at least 3 hours and the OR was pretty backed up. They were saying about an hour delay. She demanded that I go home and get some work done (I guess they are going to want us to pay for all of this somehow). Kind of hard to focus knowing that they are going to be slipping a tube that makes it easier for her body to accept poison into a main artery. Obviously, she got solace from knowing that despite it all, she is in better shape than Britney, LiLo, or the babies from Nambia not adopted by Angelina Jolie. Photo by the always awesome Queen of all Media, Perez Hilton.

Houston, we have some output. It looks like the second surgery was successful. I've never had so many people ask me about my wifes bathroom habits. It's kind of weird in that way you talk about your kids learning to use the toilet. Keep in mind that it has been 30+ days since she last used her large intestine & gone to the bathroom. It takes a while for those muscles to get in order and it causes a lot of pain. Thankfully, she is running to the bathroom a lot. Holly is up and walking around, doing laps around the floor. She still gets tired very quickly. One thing that her PT pointed out the other day was that prior to the first surgery, she was running and doing yoga daily. For the past 30 days, the most exercise she has gotten has been pushing the PCA. She has lost a lot of weight and has had a lot of atrophy. She is slowly, but steadily getting back in the swing of things. We went for a nice walk around the 3rd floor tonight. We went for a really long, double lapper, last night. I love my dates with her. It is like being 15 again and only getting to spend 30 or 40 minutes a day with your true love. They are giggly and intimate and terribly depressing when visiting hours are up.

That's not a scar? This is a scar.

I still think it's beautiful. Aaaawww. Holly's roommate was complaining last night about a little incision. I wanted to show off, but was advised that it wasn't such a hot idea. I think that this ensures our spot in the 2009 Colondar. Holly's brother, 15 year old nephew & I were discussing, after the first surgery, what we should tell people that see her in a bikini at the beach. Shark attack was a popular one. Loch Ness Monster was voted on. My vote was for a shark alligator hybrid. Thoughts?

Un Mes - Spanish Één Maand - Dutch Un Mois - French Ein Monat - German Ένας μήνας - Greek Un Mese - Italian 1 か月 - Japanese 1 달 - Korean Um Mês - Portuguese Один Месяц - Russian 一个月 - Chinese It's been one month since Holly's first surgery. Technically she is cancer free, but, per the other posts, it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride. She has spent 25 of the last 30 days in the hospital and still has at least 5 more to go. In any language, that is no fun. Since I'm American, translation by BabelFish.

8:00 – Saturday 5/26 Rather than recapping the whole day, Dr. Youn just came out and told Holly's mom and I that things went well. There was no blockage in the small intestine. He seems to feel that the whole thing was simply her body rejecting the ostomy. He has reversed it and everything looks good. He went through the ostomy to repair that. He also cut an incision in the belly, the same as before, just to check everything out. He didn't mess with anything, just wanted to confirm that nothing was wrong in there. It was all good. 10:30 - Holly is still in good spirits and glad that the ostomy bag is gone. We are still taking it day by day. Fingers crossed.

The following takes place between 7PM and 3:30AM. Doot, doot, doot, doot. It's actually been a couple of days, but I've not had the chance to write. Just when I thought that I could go a couple of days without writing about any of the drama in our lives, we hit a major problem. Holly came home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon and there was much rejoicing. She was doing really well, relaxing, enjoying the new house and generally taking it easy. On Thursday, much of the same. Laying low. On Thursday night around 7, she started to complain about bad cramps in her stomach and that she wanted to lay down. Around 9:00 she was in a lot of pain. Around 11:00, she started to throw up, but, I think, was too scared and sick and tired of being in the hospital that she fought through it. At 12:30, she threw up again and said that the pain was worse than labor. She also had no, literally, output from the ostomy. Her belly was starting to balloon like a Sally Struthers poster child. In short, she exhibited all the symptoms of a blockage. We called the doctor who told us to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. One of the really nice things about our house that we should consider when we go to sell it is the proximity to the firehouse. In San Jose, when an ambulance is called, the fire station is the first responder. They can usually get there a bit quicker and have paramedics on staff. We live 3 blocks from the fire station and no sooner had I hung up with 911 then they were at our place. Her BP was in the basement, so they started on oxygen and sodium chloride, which is quickly becoming our life line. 9 people in our house taking care of her is really freaky. 'Don't forget to grab a sweatshirt. You know it gets cold in the hospital.' she hollered as they wheeled her in the ambulance. Always the care giver. Thankfully, somehow the kids didn't wake through the ordeal. It would have been really scary for them. Sadly, the dog didn't wake up either. So much for being a good guard dog. The ambulance left before I did, but we arrived at the same time. Danica would be proud. They immediately gave her some anti-nausea medication and some pain killers. Within 10 minutes, she was a totally different person. 3:00 AM – Holly's mom lives close by and was able to drive over at 1:00 when we needed her to watch the kids. I drive home to be in the house when the kids wake up. On the way home, I pass a guy out for a leisurely bike ride. That's odd. Follow Up - Again, like the previous 2 times we've been through this, they did CT Scans, X-rays, blood work, and some head scratching. She has nothing physically wrong with her, however, she is rejecting the ostomy. Dr. Youn has seen this before and elects to reverse the ostomy early. In the end, of course, they admitted her again. Gave her a ton of IV's and plan on doing surgery Saturday morning.

In an effort to figure out what is wrong with Holly, the doctors have done all sorts of tests and have given her tons of medicine and then more tests to see how it is working out. When she originally came home from hospital, they gave her Lomotil to plug her up a bit so that food could be absorbed.  This obviously didn't work because she went into the hospital again where they upped the dosage a bit.  She got out and again, same results.  Back to the hospital. After doing tons of tests to see what was wrong, and subsequently came up empty, they opted to make a move that would make Nigel Tufnel proud.   They cranked the level of Lomotil up to 11.  This worked out really well, but clogged up the plumbing a bit.  They've turned it down a bit and for the last two nights, things have been fairly normal.

Output level - Normal Electrolyte level - Normal Sodium level - Normal Attitude - Better than normal, but this might be due to her general tiredness of being in the hospital and any ray of light is a plus.

If things go well tonight, there is talk of them taking her off of the IV tomorrow and then keeping an eye on her for a day or so.  If that goes well, she can come home!!!

So to make things frustrating for us, no one seems to know why Holly isn't keeping nutrients in. Even hooked to an IV, things are still flushing out of her. There was some thought that perhaps she gave herself a stress induced ulcer, so they wanted to check that. This could have been simply a way to generate a couple of extra bucks, but that could also be my natural cynicism coming out. They told Holly that she couldn't eat at all today in order to prep her for the endoscopy. This went over like a turd in a punch bowl and as surgery backed up and her 4:00 appointment turned to a 6:00 scope, she started getting really hungry. Essentially she hasn't eaten since Tuesday, so she is literally starving. Again, if you're looking to lose weight, there are better alternatives than cancer. Tomorrow is another day and we get the results of the scope tomorrow. Smart money is on this whole thing being psychosomatic and her system just flushing itself because it knows something is wrong. Odds are slightly higher for stomach ulcer. Dr. Youn is reluctant to reverse the illeostomy too early due to increase risk of scaring internally and the risks associated with that. We simply want to get on with life. She doesn't necessarily mind the bag, it is the weakness associated with losing all of her nutrients that suck. Once we have that figured out, it should be semi-downhill until chemo starts.

Wow, it has been a crazy couple of days. First off, Holly took a step backwards on Thursday. Wednesday morning she was feeling great and went down hill from there. By Thursday afternoon, we were on our way back to Good Sam. Essentially, what happened was she got dehydrated. This apparently is fairly common with ileostomy patients. What happens is that she would eat and get nauseous, so she would drink water which flushes her system. Since her system was already short on nutrients, and she wasn't eating, her electolytes and sodium count got all batty and it was bad news. They put her on a sodium chloride drip for a few days and she is back to where she was Wednesday morning. She also has to drink a lot of Gatorade and other vitamin & mineral based drinks (Pedolyte, Vitamin Water, etc). Soft foods like oatmeal, toast, ramen noodles, Boost milkshakes, etc are also on the diet. Anything high calorie, high sodium is good. So, lesson learned. If you get an ileostomy, be sure to drink Gatorade and Ramen noodles. I'm sure that it is completely common, but at some point, I'm going to do a write up on ebbs and flows of cancer health. This has probably been the hardest part. To make matters slightly more complicated, we moved into our house this weekend. Sadly, Holly was in the hospital and couldn't enjoy it, but it was a great Mothers Day when she came home this morning. It was a pretty lonely first night in our new home, but I'm glad that she was in the hospital being well taken care of instead of trying to inject herself into the move in process. We are so lucky to have such an amazing network of friends and family. Most of our neighbors and friends came over at some point during the day to move a box or something heavier. We got 50% of the way there, but had it extremely presentable so when Holly came home this morning. I carried her over the threshold for the first time around 11:00 this morning. All is good now, but it was a high stress, high worry level couple of days. Sorry I didn't write sooner. Thank you to everyone that showed up yesterday to help us move in.