The Darkest Hour

I have no recollection of what occurred for the following two weeks. This part of the story is a retelling of what I was told by my wife and children.
My wife had been absolutely wonderful throughout this ordeal; she was the one that ensured that I was getting the best care possible. She spoke to the doctors, she tried to understand and keep control of the situation. She was at my side as much as possible and still managed to do her job. My wife is relatively short; she’s about 5’1”. So on looking at her you might think that she would be an easy person to deal with or ignore. Fortunately for me, she is not.  

They called in a GI doctor, to perform the colonoscopy; he immediately told her that I would have to take an enema and wait 24 hours before he could do the colonoscopy. Well, my wife is not shy and when she decides something is going to happen it usually does. Her immediate thought was, “He could bleed to death in 24 hours.” She immediately decided that the colonoscopy was going to happen that night. The doctor tried to explain why he did not want to perform the procedure, but she was not having it. As far as she was concerned, I was not going to bleed to death because the GI doctor didn't want to do it right then. They had an argument about what to do next until she told him, “If my husband dies, I will sue you, the hospital and everyone else involved.” That got his attention; the colonoscopy was scheduled for that night.

I’d had a colonoscopy before and it really isn’t a big deal. They give you drugs, off to sleep you go, they do what they have to do, you wake up a while later and they give you the results; not bad as far as procedures go. The GI doctor started the colonoscopy. As I understand it, they use a low pressure air hose to facilitate visibility in the colon while they are working. As I understand it, as soon as he used the air hose a section of my intestines was blown apart. They found were the blood was coming from. The situation got a lot worse very quickly; now I was bleeding profusely internally. They called in the general surgeon and they began an emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. My blood pressure all but disappeared. After they got the bleeding stopped, the surgeon came out and spoke to my wife. He told her he would do the best he could, but he had to remove about two feet of necrotic intestines.

The emergency surgery consisted of the surgeon cutting about 8-10” straight down the front of my belly, stopping the bleeding and removing two feet of dead intestines. When I realized I was going to have bypass surgery, I knew I would have a scar in my upper chest. Now my chest was going to look like a part of Frankenstein. As a result of having to remove two feet of intestine the surgeon performed an ileostomy. What, pray tell, is an ileostomy? Well, when the surgeon removes two feet of intestine, what's left? You have an intestine that has two ends that are not connected. For whatever reason, they cannot immediately connect the two ends of the intestines.

Think of it this way: you have a garden hose. It is connected to the spigot on one end and connected to the nozzle on the other end - now cut it in half. What you now have is two hoses. One is connected to the spigot, the other is connected to the nozzle. The one connected to the spigot is still operational and has fluid still flowing. The other section still connects to the nozzle, but nothing is flowing through it. Your intestines still work even if they are not connected together, which begs the question, where do you poop? The surgeon makes two incisions, one on either side of your belly. One end is where I am going to poop through into a bag. The bag is secured to my skin with adhesive and must be changed frequently. The other end of the intestine is placed at the other incision, it does absolutely nothing; that’s the part that is still connected to the colon. However, since nothing is getting to this section of the intestine, it will just stay there for six months. 




Coming soon The Darkest Hour Part two