~ It was not as bad as I thought ~
I had a surgery to remove my rectum
I was admitted to Gleneagles Hospital on 22 May 2021. I arrived in the morning with an empty stomach, the surgery started around 1 pm. It was key hole surgery. By the time the surgery finished and I was awake, it was already 6pm. I was feeling quite fine and was fully awake. I was able to speak to my sister who was waiting for me at the ward. I had a few tubes with me, not too many. Dr Poon came to see me around midnight, after another surgery. He was a busy surgeon, indeed. All seemed fine.
I had to stay in bed for the first 3 days; no food intake, and water only. The nurses and the assistants took good care of me. Dr. Poon checked on me every day. I was already wearing a stoma pouch right after the surgery. Dr. Poon told me he had removed my entire rectum and a few lymph nodes around. He was able to preserve my sphincter so that I could have normal bowel movements after the stoma close-up surgery in about 3 months’ time. It was such a relief. The nurses did the cleaning and replaced the pouch for me, it was rather simple as I had no food intake yet.
Flowers and Care
Thanks to family and friends, they were so lovely and kind to buy me flowers and lots of flowers. I had never in my life received so many flower banquets.
One morning, the wound nurse visited me to arrange for a training session for self-changing the stoma bags at home, every 3 to 4 days. Heidi, my daughter attended the training as well because then she could help me do it as it might be difficult for myself to change the bag without any assistance. The training went well but we realized that it was far from being sufficient as we were so lack of practice.
Going Home
All went well, I was home on 29 May 2021 after staying at the hospital for one week. Because I was carrying the pouch I had to be cautious of what to eat. I avoided eating too much high fiber food, and to eat food that could be easily digested so as not to overload my gut while my gut was trying to adapt to the new conditions after the operations. I lost 2 kilos during my stay at the hospital and another 2 kilos in two weeks after I went home. My weight dropped to become 56 kg in mid- June.
Happy Birthday!!
By the way, I turned 60 on 13 June 2021. I was going to have a big birthday celebration. Of course, there was no celebration. No birthday cake, no champagne, no party…. I had steamed fish with rice…. Easy to digest. The day was quiet, but pleasant. I was glad that I was at home with my family.
Challenges
After being back home for two days, I had my first challenge of changing stoma pouch. I had Heidi helping with the change. We were both nervous and afraid of making mistakes. We finished the change not sure we were doing it right. We were not doing it right! I got up in the middle of the night and found the pouch leaking, ouch. I quickly grabbed a new pouch, went to toilet, cleaned up my mess, then put the new pouch on. I was pretty sure that I was not doing this new one correctly either. I ended up staying up the whole night, checking on the pouch from time to time.
9 am sharp I texted the wound nurse for emergency appointment. She was so kind to agree to see me immediately, despite her full schedule. She was the only wound nurse at the entire hospital.
At the treatment room, Candice replaced the leaking pouch with a new one. This time, she used another pouch model which came with a belt so that it could stay in place more securely. After this, Candice was so kind to arrange another training session for myself and my daughter. We practiced but still we were not doing it right, very depressing.
Resolution
Candice noticed my stress of not being able to take care of the pouch and the fear of leaking affected my sleep big time. After two weeks of trial and error, I made a suggestion and Candice agreed to it that I would visit her at the hospital twice a week to change the pouch until my next surgery to close up the stoma. It was such a huge relief, despite that I had to travel back and forth the hospital twice a week. I was in good hand of the professional, really a big relief.
I managed to sleep better yet not enough to give myself good energy. I fell asleep constantly around 2am thinking I should wait to empty the pouch and hoping the pouch would not be too full when I woke up in the morning. It was wrong of course but I could not help thinking like this. It was the fear I had.
Relaxed
Cecilia told me off when she saw me with a tiring body. I had to relax on this. It was all in my head because of the bad experience. Bad sleep could only slow down my recovery, and I didn’t want that, for sure. I could not carry on like this for another 2 months before the surgery. Quality sleep is crucial to health. I did not want cancer cells to come back, no!
I relaxed, I fell asleep; I woke up, there was no leaking. I continued to practice relaxing and to allow myself to sleep without worrying about the pouch. Gradually, my sleeping mode was back to normal.
