A Year Later

A year after my surgery people say—usually with surprise—that I look really great. By "great," they really mean that there is nothing to suggest I went through such an ordeal: there are no outward signs of trauma and my weight is as close to perfect as probably one could hope for. I proudly tell people I'm "the poster child" for transhiatal esophagectomies. I find myself often telling myself, "that wasn't so bad": I had no significant pain throughout, no complications, and not nearly the disruption to my life that I expected, or was lead to expect. People are often surprised when they learn I can eat essentially anything and have no physical limitations. It wasn't so bad and I would encourage others facing this surgery to worry about other things.

My eating has changed: I eat much less at any given time. This is a good thing, but I find people are often a little put off: "is that all you are going to eat?" We like to share in our gluttony. Unfortunately for me, there is a rather sudden line between enough and too much. Crossing that line still leaves me vulnerable to gastric dumping syndrome that is unpleasant enough, but which I have recently learned signals the pancreas to release more insulin. I have had several episodes in which I ate too much, got dumping and an hour later went into hypoglycemic shock. Needless-to-say, I have become cautious over how much I eat. (I find this particularly embarrassing at restaurants, when I'm convinced the waiter or waitress thinks I'm too cheap to order a real meal!)

The closest thing to a complication happened just recently. My anastomosis, the junction of what's left of my esophagus and stomach, developed a stricture from scaring. This was not unexpected and is easily fixed. A couple of days after Thanksgiving all I could swallow were fluids. No wonder: the opening into my stomach looks like it was about 3 mm. The picture they took before they stretched it out shows an undissolved pill that couldn't make its way down into my stomach. They stretched the opening to 20 mm, which resulted in an amazing difference in swallowing. I can tell that that opening has since shrunk, which is why they normally schedule a second dilation several weeks later. I will probably have to have this done periodically the rest of my life, but it's not a big procedure.

My goal this next year is to think less about cancer in general and my surgery specifically. I admit to a certain neurosis: every time I get some symptoms I've told myself, "maybe this is a new cancer." Last month I got a urinary tract infection and I was convinced I had prostate cancer. My latest experience with the stricture convinced me I probably had some horrible stomach tumor. I can laugh about these things now.