Christian's Cancer Journey

  It has been a while since I posted a video so I wanted to share how recovery is going plus some info on upcoming tests and appointments. I hope everyone has a good weekend. - Christian

 It is Wednesday Jan 12, 2022 around 1:30pm and we are home. Yesterday she did really awesome getting up and moving. She made several laps around the halls.  Her pain has been fairly under control and last night they switched from the Oxycodone to Tylenol and that has worked fine.  Dr. Ashburn told her yesterday afternoon that she was doing awesome, and that whenever she felt comfortable to go home, just let the team know and they will make it happen. We wanted to give it one more night in the hospital to be safe.  This morning, she let the team know she was ready to go home. They had to put the discharge orders in, which usually doesn't happen quickly, so we waited around half a day until that was all done. We just got home a little bit ago. She has been eating very well and is comfortable on the couch with our dog. She is a little tired of course, but glad to be home, resting here.

I got to her room around 8am this morning. She was up and looking a lot more like herself.  They had just removed the PCA pump, along with all of the extra monitoring devices (for that drug study) before I walked in. So that is great news that she doesn't have any of that to deal with anymore. Only the IV (fluids), and the ViSi monitor are on her now. She said she slept pretty good last night. They came in to check on her some of course, and they took blood at 1am, but other than that she slept good. About 5min ago, physical therapy came to get her up and moving. They aren't wasting any time!! They took her for a lap around the hall, had her do some leg movements (like marching and stuff). They said she did great. She definitely has some soreness and certain movements are "tight" and have some associated dull pain.  She said she wanted some grits, yogurt, and orange juice for breakfast, so I ordered that for her.  She is feeling relatively good for how involved the su

This is the post where the latest updates will be available. As soon as I (Kenny) have them, they will be on here. I will be updating this post throughout the day as things progress. So if you happen to leave it open in your web browser, hit "refresh" to see new additions, or you can close it and re-open it. It is Monday January 10th, about 4:30am. We were originally supposed to arrive at the hospital at 9am this morning. They called yesterday evening and said they changed that to 5:45am. Christian is just now getting up and getting ready. I went ahead and created this post so she could share it on her Facebook page before she went into surgery. Updates will begin below as things progress. Update 7:00am She was taken back and prepped for surgery around 6:15am. They got an IV started, and went over consent forms and all the questions. The surgeon and team were ready, so they just took her back to the OR and I am back out in the waiting room now. Update 11:15am I have not heard

Hey Everyone, I just got the call! I will check in for surgery at 9:00 am on Monday. The surgery should take between 3-4 hours. I will be in the Cancer Center recovering for 3-4 days afterwards. The full recovery time will depend on if Dr. Ashburn is able to go ahead and reverse my ileostomy or not; probably somewhere between 4-6 weeks. I have a post-op appointment with her scheduled for February 16. I am looking forward to getting this part behind me. I am not as nervous as I was for the liver resection. From what I have heard, recovery from the sigmoid colectomy should be a lot easier. Having it done laparoscopically will also make a huge difference in recovery time. Kenny is planning to keep everyone updated just as he did with the liver surgery.  I also have an appointment with Dr. Paluri on January 31 to draw blood for the Guardant Revel test. The Guardant Revel test is a liquid biopsy that will test for any circulating tumor DNA in my blood. It typically takes about 7 days to get