The Surgery The type of the surgery I chose to have is a Transthoracic esophagectomy, or TTE. Specifically, the Ivor-Lewis technique. I chose this surgery because this gives the surgeons the best look at everything, and the best chance of cleaning up any involved lymph nodes. In this one, they go in through the belly (a big ol' incision that looks like a shark bite across my gut), work on the stomach and remove the nasty parts, then flip me over and cut me open from just about the mid-shoulder blade right around to underneath my right arm. To get in where they need to work, they have to break several ribs and also deflate one of my lungs. Now, I'm no stranger to pain. I have lived with arthritis, bone spurs and degenerative disc disease for many years. I made it through a radical prostatectomy, and was back to work within 9 weeks. But I'll tell you the truth - this was one tough surgery! I was in the hospital a total of 10 days, 4 of those were in the Intensive Care Unit. It would have been only 3, but on the first day in a "regular" room I went into a-fib tachacardia and had to go back to ICU for another day and night. I had not been outputting enough urine, so they kept forcing fluids. They think that this probably "flooded" my heart. It was easily brought under control with medication. |
Over the next few weeks, we educated ourselves and here's what we know: Esophageal Cancer [hereafter, EC] is one of the rarer forms of cancer. It makes up less than 1% of all cancers, but it is very aggressive. There are two types of EC; squamous cell and adenocarcinoma. My type is adeno, and is probably caused by the acid reflux I have had since I was a kid. My tumor was at the gastro-esophageal junction (where the esophagus meets the stomach) and all the signs indicated that it was caught early. The doctor who scoped me said when he finds these kinds of tumors they usually have already wrapped themselves around the esophagus. Mine was only on a small portion. At this point we are saying silent prayers of thanks and thinking that I'll just get this thing cut out and that will be that. I just went through prostate cancer and had a radical prostatectomy in Jan. of 2004. I was hoping that this could be as easily taken care of. Silly me. I now had a team of doctors - the oncologist was the first one we consulted. Since there are no hard statistics one way or another, and because it was thought my EC was still in the early stages, I was given the choice of chemo and radiation treatments first, then surgery, or surgery first, and MAYBE no chemo or radiation at all. With no statistics to support either way as the better way, I chose to have surgery first. My decision was mainly because I wanted to go into this surgery as healthy as possible. By this time, we had studied up on exactly what the surgeries involved, so I knew I was going to be in for a rough ride ahead. If you have a hankerin' to read all about it, here is an excellent description of this type of cancer. Very basically, what they do in surgery is remove the esophagus, disect the stomach, then stretch the remaining stomach up and attach it to what is left of the esophagus. Eventually the "stomaphagus" learns to be an esophagus and the stomach learns to digest again and hopefully will stretch a little. What an amazing time we live in. |
Rick Gardner's Esophageal Cancer Story Page One |
Rick's Battle with The Beast |
It was December 7, 2005 - the day we found out my life would be forever changed. I had been having some trouble swallowing for a couple of months. Also had these wierd sort of backward hickups, and food just didn't seem to be going down very fast. I went to visit my regular doctor about another minor matter, and my wife, Robyne, insisted that I tell the doc about this swallowing problem. He said, "Well, it's about time that you had a baseline colonoscopy, so we might as well check the other end while we're in there, too." A few days later I checked in to our local hospital for an outpatient colonoscopy and an endoscopy. The doctor came out to the waiting room and told my wife "We found something." |
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visitors to this site since it's creation in March of 2006. |
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Over the next few weeks, we educated ourselves and here's what we know: Esophageal Cancer [hereafter, EC] is one of the rarer forms of cancer. It makes up less than 1% of all cancers, but it is very aggressive. There are two types of EC; squamous cell and adenocarcinoma. My type is adeno, and is probably caused by the acid reflux I have had since I was a kid. My tumor was at the gastro-esophageal junction (where the esophagus meets the stomach) and all the signs indicated that it was caught early. The doctor who scoped me said when he finds these kinds of tumors they usually have already wrapped themselves around the esophagus. Mine was only on a small portion. At this point we are saying silent prayers of thanks and thinking that I'll just get this thing cut out and that will be that. I just went through prostate cancer and had a radical prostatectomy in Jan. of 2004. I was hoping that this could be as easily taken care of. Silly me. I now had a team of doctors - the oncologist was the first one we consulted. Since there are no hard statistics one way or another, and because it was thought my EC was still in the early stages, I was given the choice of chemo and radiation treatments first, then surgery, or surgery first, and MAYBE no chemo or radiation at all. With no statistics to support either way as the better way, I chose to have surgery first. My decision was mainly because I wanted to go into this surgery as healthy as possible. By this time, we had studied up on exactly what the surgeries involved, so I knew I was going to be in for a rough ride ahead. If you have a hankerin' to read all about it, here is an excellent description of this type of cancer. Very basically, what they do in surgery is remove the esophagus, disect the stomach, then stretch the remaining stomach up and attach it to what is left of the esophagus. Eventually the "stomaphagus" learns to be an esophagus and the stomach learns to digest again and hopefully will stretch a little. What an amazing time we live in. |
The Surgery The type of the surgery I chose to have is a Transthoracic esophagectomy, or TTE. Specifically, the Ivor-Lewis technique. I chose this surgery because this gives the surgeons the best look at everything, and the best chance of cleaning up any involved lymph nodes. In this one, they go in through the belly (a big ol' incision that looks like a shark bite across my gut), work on the stomach and remove the nasty parts, then flip me over and cut me open from just about the mid-shoulder blade right around to underneath my right arm. To get in where they need to work, they have to break several ribs and also deflate one of my lungs. Now, I'm no stranger to pain. I have lived with arthritis, bone spurs and degenerative disc disease for many years. I made it through a radical prostatectomy, and was back to work within 9 weeks. But I'll tell you the truth - this was one tough surgery! I was in the hospital a total of 10 days, 4 of those were in the Intensive Care Unit. It would have been only 3, but on the first day in a "regular" room I went into a-fib tachacardia and had to go back to ICU for another day and night. I had not been outputting enough urine, so they kept forcing fluids. They think that this probably "flooded" my heart. It was easily brought under control with medication. |
One of my first "big" walks, day 6 post-op. What you cannot see is the second nurse, behind me,. It took all three of us to haul me, my tubes and all my equipment down that hallway. |
The Story Continues... This page is getting pretty graphics-heavy, so to ease your downloading frustrations I will be dividing this site into pages. |
A.C.O.R.= Assoc. of Cancer Online Resources, including a wonderful support group! |
-Webmistress Robyne |
