Hi all,
Thanks for the thoughts and prayers everyone, they helped. Thank you JNF for posting this. I kept meaning to post something but never found the time.
Paul was having issues with his bowels since right after his first round of chemo. Looking back he may have had episodes that cleared themselves as far as 15 years ago (very very rare, but severe attacks). Nothing too serious or so we thought.
He had for a long time been having some severe pains in his lower abdomen and even scrotum hurt at times. We attributed this to the cancer when they found that.
Apparently it wasn't... We still aren't sure why yet but he had the absolute worst bowel adhesions and inflammation that any of the surgeons had ever seen- started with one surgeon, went to two and they even called in the chief for a look at it! Generally those are caused by multiple surgeries which he has only had one as infant to correct hernias he was born with- which souldn't even have gone near his abdominal cavity.... Plus his omentum was pushed down into his pelvis!
All this caused one huge blockage in small intestine. They needed to do a resection which so far was successful but will be a very long recovery and he will probably be in the hospital another 1.5 weeks! He has been in since late Thursday night and had the surgery Sunday evening. Lasted 4.5 hrs and went full open but he tried his best to do it laparascopically.
The good news? There were no signs of cancer...the doc looked all over things-surface of liver, kidneys, etc.... AND... the abdominal CT scan that was done had bases of lungs shown and all the mets there seem to have vanished from the ADT and one round of chemo he had!! Doc is running a PSA and Testosterone tomorrow with his morning labs!!
Soooo... many questions... Did the cancer cause this? Were the internal organs coated with little or micro mets all over like his lungs and this is the end result? Maybe... Was this somehow caused by surgery as a newborn? Maybe.... exacerbated by chemo and other meds? possibly... An underlying condition we have yet to learn about? Could be....
The section of bowel they cut out was pretty big and sent to pathology. They didn't send any of the omentum which I am disappointed that they didn't... But waiting on that and maybe then some answers, hard to say.....
Today was pivotal in that he was retaining fluids in his abdomen and having very little urine output. THis is called third spacing and can lead to compartment syndrome and crush organs and cut off blood supply. He has finally begun producing urine at a good rate but is in a lot of pain from surgery, inflammation and now the swelling again. He looked about to give birth to triplets before the surgery!!
He isn't allowed to eat and wont for some time now. He will be put on IV nutrition (TPN) in next couple of days (tomorrow will be a week since he has eaten!).
So far no leaks at joining of bowels, no clots, no necrosis of his bowels, and no other major things presenting other than his bad pain.
Bottom line... full recovery is expected yet it will take a very long time. Cancer treatments are indefinitely on hold because of this. The pain that had been so severe all this time? Maybe this was the cause and not the cancer. That would be great!!
So Paul does it again... The medical freak show stumps the docs with more weird crap. I think he is half alien or something hence the odd presentations of his cancer, and now this!! Maybe that explains him!!
Soooo still so many unknowns but he is making progress and good news comes with the bad. I think he needs to buy some lottery tickets or something though!!