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Made it out of the hospital last night and oh does it feel good to shower and sleep in your own bed! Of course as the prerequisite to being discharged I had to earn the shirt shown below. 

Have a great holiday weekend! I think I am going to keep it low key. 

Obstructed Bowel :-(

A very common issue of major abdominal surgery is getting a bowel obstruction. Turns out after over a year it can still happen. Last Thursday the scar tissue from my surgery decided to put a stranglehold on my small bowel. This results in horrible cramps and abdominal pain. The wonderful girlfriend took me to Providence Hospital in Portland where I got admitted Thursday night (the poor girl gets to take me to the hospital too often and only at night, no sleep for us). A CT scan showed that it was just scar tissue and unlikely due to any new cancer growth or a side effect of treatment. Good news in the scheme of things. If we were lucky this would unravel itself in a few days. Turns out I am not that lucky and so went under the knife on Sunday. 

Surgery was quick at around an hour with no complications. My surgeon was conservative and straightforward with me which I appreciated. He also had a very dry sense of humor that took some time to get used to. I will likely be in the hospital for another 5-7 days until the bowels wake back up. Chemo this week will be postponed. Not sure how it will affect the rest of my schedule. Hopefully we just skip this week and start over with the next round. 

On other good news the CT scan did not show an enlarged lymph node (granted this was without contrast). But maybe that sucker is shrunk even more!

Little Sister Successfully Married!

I officiated my little sisters wedding and things couldn't have gone better. We had about 180 guests at my parents house in the Yakima Valley on a hot summer day. Lots of prep work and improvement projects were done for the event and it really transformed the place (although I don't think my parents are up for making this a common venue to rent). My brother and I brewed 20 gallons of beer for the event and it was thoroughly enjoyed. The chest freezer we converted to a "keezer" worked great. Really the highlights for me was hearing my Grandpa speak from the heart to the new couple and me being able to announce the new husband and wife. It was a day full of happy emotions.