The Name of The Game is Operation.

Good morning blog-o-sphere!

It is now 8:00AM and as you read this, I am on an operating table in a good hospital, and have been under anesthesia for approximately an hour if we are running as scheduled.  My surgeon, however is Italian, and will be the first to admit that he runs "15 minutes to a half hour late - "Continental style" - in his words.

So an hour into this, the bottom two feet of my colon has been removed, and hopefully, they are beginning to reattach it to the end of the poop pipe.

You are asking, no, really saying, how vile! (if you are easily offended) and other wise, if you are MJ, you are saying "Cookie is having his Hershey Highway widened.  Well, not quite.

Let's just say that in a grammatical fashion, my colon is being turned into a semi-colon. ~rimshot~

Tough crowd.

As you all know, I have been living with, and managing diverticulitis for a very long time.  And over the years the attacks have become more frequent, and over the past two years my ability to bounce back from them has become much harder.

So what is diverticulitis you are wondering.  It is God's punishment for not eating the vegetables that my mother insisted that I needed to eat.  Essentially, the sigmoid colon weakens, and the walls are prone to small bulging sacks, called (diverticula) .  As foods that humans can't digest easily (sesame seeds are enemy number one) make their way through the colon, they can drop into these sacks (diverticula) with crap, fester, cause an infection, and amazing pain.  The more frequently this happens, the sacks weaken and microscopic bits on the infect matter can get out through teeny tiny holes, and they make you really sick.

After talking to my doctor, and the Italian GI doctor, we have all come to the conclusion that now is the time to fix this before it potentially kills me.

The doctor explained it thus, in his heavily accented English:

He: Through laparoscopic incisions, I will remove the bottom two feet of colon...

Me: TWO FEET?!

He: Not to worry, the colon is over six feet long.  So you will retain and use the four feet that remains.  So it is like a dryer vent, and can be extended easily.  In essence, the colon is what you would call the clown car of the human body.

Me: Clown car?  Wouldn't that be magician handkerchief? You keep pulling it and it keeps coming out...

He: Oh, no.  The small intestine is over 18 feet long.  So it is more like a magician's handkerchief - unending, but without the bouquet of flowers.

Me: Yeah, right...

He: Just a little gastroenterologist humor.

So, if everything goes according to plan, then the plumbing will start right up and I should be eating solid food by tonight, and home by Wednesday or Thursday.

HOWEVER, if things do not go well, then he'll go with plan "B", which is a temporary colostomy, and surgery in April or March to reconnect everything then.

And plan "C"?  Not even thinking about that.  But we will get through it because I am too young and beautiful to do otherwise.

By 10 or 11 or I should be awake, scratchy throat and ready for an afternoon nap because of the pain meds.

So say a little prayer and if all goes well, you should hear from me in about a week or so.