Yeah, I fought my first heart attack for 5 days thinking it was just really bad heartburn.

Pro-tip - if heartburn lasts more than 24 hours, it’s not ‘just’ heartburn.

This was mine following my 2nd heart attack:

Cancer free without the whole “gutted like a fish” part.

Guys, guys, it’s all good. I got what they meant even if it may not have come across that way! We’re all fine now, how are you? 😉

They’re right in that a normal, healthy person, not recovering from major surgery, should be on a diet rich in fiber.

Doesn’t apply in my case because, recovering from major surgery, but you can bet once my 2 week low fiber limit expires, I’m increasing fiber. Have a plan all set and ready to go!

The colon is all about pulling water out of your stool to make poop, well… poop!

The sigmoid colon is the last line of that process. So without it, poop will still be poop, but maybe not necessarily as firm as it would be with it.

In my case, that works to my advantage, because I take statin drugs and statin drugs make me miserable. Having slightly looser stool might actually make me normal for a change!

I just don’t buy that there’s a market for bootleg chocolate…

(opens coat) “Heyyyy, uh, can I interest you in a Hershey bar? Maybe some Twix?”

You can see, the doc himself was like $7,800, the bulk of it being “hospital fees”. It will be interesting to see the breakdown on the UB-04 as to what those actual fees were. Probably tens of thousands for all the lab work every 3 hours and the heparin drip I was on.

^ This I’m actually under orders for a LOW fiber diet for 2 weeks!

I know, counter intuitive. But the idea is to take the pressure off where they re-stitched the colon to the rectum.

Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!

My pain scale is marred by other things I’ve had so this really is barely registering. If I peg the 10 at “Spinal Stenosis”, so far this is like a 6, currently a 4. I didn’t even need the oxy today except to go to sleep.

And yeah, was laparoscopic, so I have 4 small incision sites instead of one giant one like with the open heart surgery.

As far as other gastro problems go, I was pretty screwed up by the statins they put me on for the heart stuff. So being a little more “loose” than normal is nice compared to that:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3291011/

Hopefully the two will balance each other out!

✅

Anemia brought me in for a colonoscopy in June. They found 17 polyps, 2 from the upper GI and 15 from the colon, but no cancer.

2 were large enough to be concerning, 20mm and 30mm and when I saw the pictures I was like “Oh, crap, THAT’S CANCER.” Nope, not cancerous.

But the rule of thumb is if they find more than 5 or of they are bigger than 5mm, you wait 6 months, come back, and do it again.

2nd time, 6 polyps, 1 20mm and full blown invasive cancer.

The photo also looked TOTALLY different from what I thought was cancer. All pink and bubbly, no black discoloration like on the others.

I just assumed when they pull something out of you that looks like Tetsuo from the end of Akira, that’s cancer, not so.

Looks more like:

America - for profit everything!

2026 has been the longest year of our lives and it’s FEBRUARY!

“a Political Movement that is far smaller than people would think — But obnoxious, ignorant, and loud!”

🤔

RUUUUUUUN!

You stop caring to argue your point.

Someone does a big presentation.

Back of your head: “Well that’s obviously a terrible idea for X, Y, and Z reasons.”

You keep quiet and let it blow up instead of trying to fix the process as it’s being implemented.

The sigmoid colon is gone, only question is if it snuck into the lymph system before they got it.

That becomes stage 3 with chemo. And it’s hanging over my head for 5-7 days (more like 2-5 days now.)

Diabetic so strict glucose control is already a thing.

This cancer was solved for surgically, we just don’t know yet if they got it all. 5-7 days on that!

Started with mild anemia. Low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin, small red blood cells, etc.

Iron didn’t really help so it was colonoscopy #1 and Endoscopy #1, then a follow up colonoscopy 6 months later.

Find the center square with the screw behind the sticker, remove the sticker, remove the screw, disassemble/reassemble!