After the little bit of scan faffing around at Frimley, Basingstoke Hospital contacted me on 27th July to offer me an appointment to talk to a surgeon on Friday 6th August, so I had been accepted by them. Initial feelings were that was good news, that I was going to a specialist hospital, so ultimately getting the best treatment possible, but equally fearful of how long the delay could be for me to have an operation and if I would need more chemotherapy (as I had been previously warned). The one ray of light I thought, was that the receptionist explained my letter and text notifications would show the wrong time for the appointment as they were “squeezing me in”, that made me hope maybe there wouldn’t be a long wait.
August 6th rolled around, myself and my wife left ourselves plenty of time to allow for any traffic on the M3 and any issues parking, as it turned out there were no such issues and we were there almost an hour early, but after the Reading parking experience, I will take this any day of the week. Again, I must point out I could take someone with me to this meeting, so make sure you take someone as there is a lot of information to go through.
So the meeting, first of all the surgeon explained what the tumour looked like from the scans I had had at Frimley and showed them to us on his screen, it was quite strange seeing a 3D “ham cuts” (how the surgeon described it) of my chest area down to where the issue lay in my bowel. From this the scans looked like the tumour was possibly also on my appendix, colon and stomach lining, but definitely in my bowel (the only way to check the other locations was with an operation and seeing what it was doing).
First I’ll get the good news out of the way, Basingstoke were aiming to operate on me in around 5 weeks, so that meant no extra chemotherapy would be required, as they need the patient to have not had chemotherapy for at least 6 weeks, to give them a little bit of time to recover from that. I was also advised general gentle exercise (so using my exercise bike) would be beneficial, as the fitter I was going into the operation would help me in the operation itself but also in the recovery process afterwards. I really wasn’t looking forward to the idea of more chemotherapy so for me this was a weight off my shoulders and a relief.
Then the general information came about the operation, first of all the standard warning that I could die on the operating table if complications arise (it was described as highly unlikely, but it has to be mentioned). I would be lying if I said this didn’t affect me, that night at home I definitely remember being awake during the night with my wife asleep, just getting teary as maybe the severity of what was coming up was sinking in. Eventually I did manage to compose myself, literally thinking back to when I was told about my diagnosis in January, back then for just over an hour I thought I was about to die, now I was having an operation to keep me alive, somehow that calmed me.
It would also be unlikely that I would require any form (temporary or permanent) of stoma bag after the operation, again there was always a chance, but the surgeon was very confident that I wouldn’t require one. I would also need to be in hospital before the operation to have bowel preparation to be ready for the operation, then I could be in hospital after the operation for around 10/14 days as the best case scenario, 21 days in case I was slower progressing. In terms of recovery from the operation I would be in the intensive care ward for a couple of days and then going forward was looking at 6/8 weeks before I could drive, but for overall recovery 3/4 months.
Finally we were given the basic outline of the operation procedure, they planned to open my abdomen through a midline incision and remove the peritoneum (the lining on the right side). They would then do a radical right hemicolectomy taking the appendix and right side of the bowel out, followed by taking the greater omentum. To finish they would then give me hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy, this is chemotherapy heated to 43 Celsius for 1 hour to flush though the peritoneal cavity to get rid of any fragments of tumour that might be left floating around.
Now we just had to wait for a call with an operation date (spoiler alert, it came through for September 3rd).
