Pain in Nick's A**: We have a game time

Lindsey and I met with the surgeon for a pre-op consultation. All in all kind of a waste of time, but whatever. The one thing that was decided was a surgery date. Jan. 25th will be the date I lose about a third of my large intestine. Oh and what ever is left of the cancer. Why do I say what ever is left? Well I guess 25% of the time the cancer is completely killed by the radiation and when they take it out. Which in the end doesn't mean the treatment changes (still will have surgery to remove it and chemo to kill whatever may be floating around my body), but the down staging of the tumor reduces the chance of recurrence and in the end that's the main goal of this whole thing. I can tell right now that the tumor is smaller, how can I tell. Well besides the fact that bowel movements feel like passing fireballs currently, they are about twice the diameter as they were at the beginning of this whole thing. So, the tumor that was clogging the pipes isn't doing much clogging anymore, which is phenomenal. You take for granted how great taking a complete and full bowel movement is, until you can't.

So it looks like I'll be in the hospital for 3-5 days. I can't leave until my bowel 'wakes up' and they need to make sure there's no leakage in the anastomosis (the reconnection of the bowel). Surprisingly I'm suppose to take walks as it helps 'wake up' the bowel and I can eat, when I feel like eating.

As of now I don't have any cancer related appointments until the 14th of Jan. for CT and PET scans, then a colonoscopy on the 16th. So three weeks without having to go to Stanford to get poked and prodded at, sweet. On top of that I'm feeling better everyday (pain in my a**, is almost not a pain any longer...for now), so the holidays should be pretty enjoyable.