…and another thing

A chance to combine the World Cup, gardening, Crohn’s Disease and colorectal surgery all in one post or maybe just a chance to do some navel gazing.

With the World Cup upon us once more my memory has been drifting back to when it was held in South Africa eight years ago and the situation I found myself in at the time.. A couple of posts ago I wrote about things I don’t/didn’t know about IBD and my unsated curiosity.  Here’s some other things that I’m curious about, bear with me.

In 2010 I knew I was heading for surgery. The pain in my abdomen/back was stopping me from getting a good night’s sleep. In May my consultant told me to expect  to go under the knife within 4 weeks at our local hospital. Preparations to get my life in order went into overdrive only to come to an abrupt halt when my wife and I were invited to attend an impromtu MDM with my consultant, his boss and their colorectal surgeon. The upshot was that the operation, or more specifically the recovery, was too complex for them to contemplate. They were referring me to St.Thomas’ in Westminster. You can imagine it was a bit of a bombshell.

A meeting with the surgeon at St.Thomas’ resulted in the date for the operation being set for the second week in October. (It couldn’t be September as he always went on holiday for the month!)

Strangely I started to feel a lot better and the pain improved greatly. I decided that one of the projects that had been on hold could go ahead – the construction of a pergola. It may not  sound very exciting  but it was quite a challenging piece of work, especially for someone about to undergo surgery.

Having designed the structure, ordered and collected the timber I spent many happy days and evenings digging the holes, cutting the joints and assembling the structure. It helped take my mind off the forthcoming operation. Although it was physical work it was also relaxing and, of course, tiring. Getting to sleep was not a problem.

A few days after starting….

The finished job

My constant companion throughout that period was the World Cup on the radio so when I heard the opening match between Russia and Saudi Arabia today (14th June) I was  immediately transported back to that hot summer, balmy evenings and re-ignited the questions…

In 2010 my guts were in a pretty bad way  – there were loops, fistulas and, probably most worryingly, my intestines had started to attach themselves to my back muscles (hence the back pain) and to vital organs.

One of the surgeons very kindly drew this diagram for me

The questions : If I was in such a bad way how did I manage to complete a physically demanding project. How much longer could I have continued without the “elective” surgery becoming “emergency” surgery. It was five months from when I had expected to have surgery to actually entering the operating theatre. It seems like a long time to wait.

I know I will never get an answer to my musings but once again curiosity is getting the better of me. I’ll just keep them on my lengthening list of “nice to knows“. Tune in next week for some more navel gazing (I’d like to commend the skill of the surgical team for still having a navel to gaze at.)