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!