pre-op advice please

[Mantras131]

I have just been diagnosed with bowel cancel. Small tumour and they don’t believe it has spread. In 4 weeks I will have an operation to remove the tumour and part of the bowel.

I would appreciate advice on how to prepare for the operation. What food to eat / avoid. For those that have been through this any tips on how to cope?

any advice welcome with thanks in advance

[GCCA-Survivor Administrator]

Hi Mantras131,

Thanks for posting on Colon Cancer Connected. I hate to hear about your diagnosis, but I am glad to see that you have a plan of attack to get rid of it. Given my situation, I had to have partial colectomy surgery in a rather short time after finding out I had cancer. I don’t remember doing a lot of preparation for the surgery. One thing I did not do was dwell on my situation having been diagnosed with cancer. There was nothing I could do about it now. I focused on winning this fight. I focused on what I could control. I didn’t know how to fight cancer, so I need a good doctors for that. I focused on cancer being the opponent that needed to be defeated. You should focus on defeating cancer and not why you got cancer.

I looked at the surgeon as being a part of my team and helping me defeat what was going on. It is what it is, and I knew the surgery would help me by getting rid of it. In my case, the cancer had spread so the surgery wasn’t going to be the last part of my fight. I do hope that surgery is the last part of your fight. Another good thing to focus on is that your doctor said they don’t believe it has spread. That’s great. Your doctors may want you to take some precautionary rounds of chemo or some other therapy just to make sure you’re getting rid of it. So, don't be surprised about that and definitely bring that up with your doctors next time you talk to them.

As I said before, things happened rather quickly with me. I was kind of shocked at how long it was gonna take me to cover. Looking back at this, I would say that giving yourself plenty of time and do the recovery the way your doctors want it to be done is the best thing to focus on. You don’t want to be doing anything before it’s time to be doing it and perhaps ruin what your doctor’s surgery has done for you. I also say your role as “patient” means that you need to be the best patient you can be. You can control a lot of things that can be very beneficial. You control your faith, attitude, nutrition, and hydration as your body is the playing field and you want it to be the best it can be.

Another thing I found beneficial to think about was that I was not the first one to have to go through this. You can ask your surgeon, but I would bet he has done this many times and knows exactly what to expect. You could even ask him what you should be doing to help with the effort. I know when I had a gastrojejunostomy (a form of stomach bypass), I asked the surgeon how often this is done. He was an oncology surgeon. He said he does it all the time. He drew me a great drawing of what was going to happen. I found that great to think about it.

I do wish you the best with your surgery. I hope others on this site will jump in and give you some thoughts about having surgery and how they coped with it.

Thank you,

Tom

[Mantras131 in reply to GCCA-Survivor]

Dear Tom, thank you so much for your response and sound advice. The waiting for diagnosis was hard but feel much calmer now there is a plan. Advice 're recovery time very helpful. All the best..

[GCCA-Survivor Administrator in reply to Mantras131]

Forgot this. As soon as possible, get out and go walking. They told me walking was good and I did a lot of it. They wanted me out of bed almost right away. At first it was literally steps. I counted tiles on the hallway floor of the hospital. I set goals to increase the count every walk. I found that to be a good challenge to focus on. Tile count turned into hallways covered to streets to miles.

👍Tom

[Mantras131 in reply to GCCA-Survivor]

Thanks Tom

[AnxiousDude10]

you will be fine and everything will work out! I have been having stomach bloating and discomfort and thing stools as well. What were your symptoms?

[Mantras131]

No symptoms atall. Tumour found in routine colonoscopy. Hope your symptoms improve.