Surgery went well and given what my surgeon told my mom, it was a success. He did find a staple from my last surgery and that’s likely what caused the fistula (as opposed to an abscess or infection). He did take a sample of something and send it off to pathology, but I don’t know to what extent that is standard operating procedure.

It’s 9:30 now and I’ll be heading to sleep in the next hour. The day began at 9 with one of those special showers with a special soap. Truthfully I didn’t sleep much since I made sure to get up every few hours to check my ostomy bag. We got to the hospital about 10:30 for a 12:30 surgery and by about 10:45 I was in preop getting prepped. Unfortunately with COVID, my mom couldn’t stay in preop with me. Preop in general didn’t take very long, but I was there awhile. The doctor using the OR ahead of me was running behind, so surgery got pushed back about an hour. While I was in preop, I got good drugs for the dehydration headache I had. In the end, they gave me some better drugs, to the point where I was drowsy and didn’t even notice when the nurse started my redials IV. Thankfully, they also used my port. Before they took me back to surgery, I did get to see my mom again.

Surgery went well enough that I do not have any new scars. They also did a flex sig to look at what’s left of my rectum as long I was already under. By 3:40 I was in recovery and by 4 I was well on my way to awake. My fairly low blood pressure kept me from getting pain meds for awhile (pain meds can lower blood pressure). Eventually it stabilized, even if it didn’t go up much. But my nurse started with low doses of dilaudid and had my blood pressure stayed stable, he gave me a bigger dose. It took a couple rounds of .2mg doses before I was comfortable. Unfortunately for me, it took awhile for me to get a room cleared and assigned on the appropriate floor and then to be transported up there. As a result, it was after 8pm before I finally got to see my mom again.

Tomorrow will include a visit by an ostomy nurse to check things over. Hopefully we’ll also be able to change my ostomy bag. The hospital used a two piece and I just hate two piece bags. They are so much harder with so much more tough plastic. I just don’t find the comfortable to wear. I was smart enough though to bring enough of my own supplies for a couple of bag changes.

I doubt I’ll be going home tomorrow, so the only question then is does the weekend push my discharge date to Monday or will I be discharged over the weekend.

One last piece of fun. In our family when you have a lengthy hospital stay or surgery, you get a stuffed animal. Here’s my new one.