Hello:
I am new in this forum, I just wanted to share my experience with you. I was diagnosed with Colorectal cancer in July 2008, I was put in a chemotherapy (24/7) and radotherapy treatment right away for 2 months to reduced tumor, then I had a rest of a month and a half to prepare for surgery, in that month I visited 3 different oncologist colon surgeons in Miami where I live to have second opinions, all of them told me that I was going to have a permanent colostomy or ileostomy, I was horrified with the idea, they told me that it was going to be very hard to avoid it becasue the tumor was located very low in the rectum.
I decided then to look for other opinions of surgeons outside Florida, in my list of hospitals and surgeons were: MD Anderson, Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. Well we decided for a surgoen in Memorial Sloan kettering since he was the only one who had a technique that would reconstruct my rectum and sphincter muscle with parts of my colon and save me from having to have an ostomy for the rest of my life. Well, my resection was on Oct. 22 2008 at memorial MSKCC, I woke up with a temporay ileostomy, I came to Florida and on Dec. 1 2008 I started another rouind of chemo (Folfox) for 4 months. For those 6 months that I had the ileostomy I did very well I am a fitness-piltes instructor so I never stop excercising, I work out for 2 hours daily and did lots of excersices with my pelvis to endure my glutes muscles and the sphincters too (so that really helps a lot with the recovery and my well being).
On march 4th I finish the 8 treatmensts of Folfox, and on April 22 I had my ileo-reverse and port removal at MSKCC again.
I was afraid of this surgery because I have heard lots of horror stories and also afraid of not able to use my sphicter muscle properly, but THANK GOD everything was a complete success. It is not even a month of my reversal and I feel wonderful, I go to the bathroom very much normal, the first week after the surgury the stool was very liquidy but it started hardening with time, and as I said today I am very close to normal, I go to the bathroom like five or six times a day little bits, but as the days go by I have less visitis to the bathroom but more consistant stool and more amounts. I eat pretty much everything, I mean healthy foods like cooked vegetebales i only eat fish and chiken, lots of water whole weat breads, and try to eat everything organic, eccept for uncooked foods, no saldas yet, for at least one more moth, I really feel super good.
Not all of the reversals are a disaster mine not only went well, even if the doctors in Florida told me I was going to have a permanent ileostomy but I feel good and I can control my sphicter muscle perfectly well like I have always had. I thank Dr. Paty at Memorial Sloan Kettering for doing such a great surgery both times, to me he is the best Colorectal Onc Surgeon in the USA....perhaps the World.
Good luck to anyone that is going to have a reversal and to the ones that already had it.