We’ve all heard about progress in modern medicine over the years. Advances in medicine have come at an astounding rate in my lifetime. But until last week, this was mostly academic for me.
Last week on Friday I had surgery that had been planned for months. In January, I came down with an infection in my colon (large intestine) called diverticulitis. It manifested itself in the form of a pain in my abdomen.
After a couple bouts with the infection and three rounds of antibiotics to completely get rid of it, I consulted our local well known surgeon, Dr. John Carlson. I was hoping to avoid surgery, but talking to Dr. Carlson, I was pretty easily convinced.
I remember the statistics like it was yesterday. If a person gets diverticulitis once, they are 32% likely to get it again. After they’ve had it twice, they are 85% likely to get it again. More than twice, it’s almost a sure thing.
So I scheduled surgery. I wanted to be sure that I would not miss a wedding at the end of September (Nathan and Genevieve’s) due to the long recovery, so it was scheduled for October. The best open date was October 26.
This brings me to the point of this long post. The surgery is formally called a colon resection. What it means is that they would remove the section of colon that is diseased, then sew the two ends together. Dr. Carlson explained to me that the surgery could be done in the conventional manner: long incision, working on everything with conventional tools, then sew it all back together. This requires a long painful recovery, especially with a guy my size. (I’m a very big guy, but getting smaller since the surgery…)
Or he could do laparoscopic surgery, which means they do the surgery with instruments that fit through small incisions using a tiny camera guiding what they do. They literally watch what they are doing on a TV or computer monitor, I’m not sure which. The result is that the largest incision they have to make is one where they remove the bad part of the colon. And my recovery time and pain are decreased dramatically. When I heard this, I started asking people to pray specifically for this.
You see, Dr. Carlson wasn’t sure which type of surgery he would be able to do. He would try to use the laparoscopic method, but if that didn’t work because of my weight, they would have to do it using the conventional method.
When I woke up, I found out that they were able to use the laparoscopic method, and also that the disease had been worse than they thought. (They had done an x-ray in June, and it showed most, but not all of the problem.) But the surgery was completely successful. So I was grateful that I didn’t chicken out just because I felt OK before the surgery. I knew the facts, and trusted that God had given me a wise doctor.
After a week, I’m still not feeling great, still regaining strength, etc. But the pain from the incisions is almost non-existent, except if I cough. I could take a shower after 2 days, and didn’t even have external stitches (they used tape).
I think the most interesting part came on Monday before I left the hospital that evening, when Dr. Carlson came to check up on me. We chatted for a minute about how well I was doing with the incisions, then he just exclaims “I love my job.” With all of the medical advances, it’s always exciting and gratifying for him. He pointed out that he has a brother-in-law retiring as a doctor, and he can’t imagine doing that yet, because he can’t think of anything he could do in retirement that he would enjoy as much as what he does right now. That must be why he is one of the most respected doctors I know.
Thanks everyone for all of your prayers, and keep praying for a fast recovery!