Dale’s Personal Blog

Quick update on the medical front – the surgery went well, but this last interim phase of the whole process is proving to be a bit of a challenge from a lifestyle perspective.

For anyone else out there looking forward to three step J-Pouch surgery, beware that the experience between operations 1 and 2, which for me and others I know has been a relative breeze, can lull you into a false sense of security. I really didn’t imagine that the period between the second and last operations would be so disruptive.

Living with a pretty big part of your digestive system either gone forever or temporarily disconnected (while the clever bits of re-engineering properly heal), makes keeping things together from a nutrition and fluid/electrolyte balance point of view quite ‘interesting’ (and I mean that very much in the Chinese sense of the word). I am suffering the odd ‘crash’ (that feels like a very bad hangover) as a result of this from time to time, and things are not helped by some tactical issues with the ‘equipment’, which is proving quite constraining from a travel perspective. Indeed, I wasn’t able to make it to a conference I was supposed to be attending in Vienna this week, and with that in mind, I am seriously considering ducking out of two more up and coming international work trips.

But enough of the moaning – I am back on the bike and in the gym, so getting some good exercise again. And apart from the abovementioned crashes, the brain is firing on cylinders, so I can function OK with regard to most aspects of my job and generally get on with the personal side of life.

I don’t have a date for the third and final operation yet, but saw the surgeon the other day and the request has gone in to the good old NHS appointments system to get it scheduled. The last procedure is not exactly trivial, but certainly not the major surgery the first two operations represented, so I am hoping they can sneak me onto the slab in early December, which would give me a decent chance of recovery before Christmas.

The finishing line is in sight!