Marc's Esophageal Cancer Story

diagnosis | surgery | chemo & rad | afterward | resources

surgery - march 1995

On March 5, 1995, I was admitted to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, MN. Rochester Methodist Hospital and St. Mary's, are both affiliated with Mayo, and St. Mary's is, from what I gathered, where they perform, the major-league surgeries.

The procedure I was about to undergo definitely qualified as a major-league surgery! It is known as in Ivor-Lewis resection, or a Transthoracic Esophagectomy. The procedure is quite involved as the esophagus is not easy to get at, since it lives in front of the spine, and behind the trachea. Open-heart surgery comes in second to an Ivor-Lewis.

Basically there are two surgical sites - the first incision is down the front, from the diaphragm to the navel, and it "mobilizes" the stomach (a nice way of saying they cut it loose).

The second incision starts near the upper spine just inside the right shoulder blade, and proceeds down to midway on the right side. From there they removed the bottom two thirds on my esophagus, along with twenty lymph nodes, fourteen of which tested positive for cancer! Meanwhile, half of my stomach was also taken out, and the remaining half was reshaped into a replacement esophagus.

My surgery lasted just over five hours, and I was in intensive care for just under 18 more. This was a testimony to Dr. Trastek's skill and the general quality of care at Mayo.

My digestive tract is now highly optimized. The place where the "stomach thing" attaches to the esophageal stub is called an anastomosis. It's basically a joint. The quality of the surgeon is important here, as the anastimosis must not leak and hopefully won't scar too badly.

My recovery period at St. Mary's, set at 12 days, was to allow the anastomosis to heal fully. The care was excellent, and they had me walking the day after I came up from ICU. I had a morphine drip for several days and had five various tubes sticking out interesting places of my body for longer than that - several of which hadn't had holes for tubes before. I quickly learned that the respiratory therapist meant well and was not a sadist at heart, although I didn't believe that for the first week, as I came to hate the Voldyne breathing exercise.

My friends from work sent me a care package, containing among other things, the rubber chicken that had graced the top of my cubicle wall - I don't want to explain this any more than saying that software people collect weird office art.

When the box arrived a few days after surgery, Tammy opened it, and a note on top simply said "Cluck, Cluck, Big Boy". I started laughing, which hurt more than the respiratory therapist's treatments, and begged Tammy NOT to dig in the foam shipping peanuts... I knew the chicken was inside, and seeing it would probably kill me outright.

When she did pull it out, it was worse than anticipated... there was my rubber chicken, complete with a surgical mask and rubber gloves on its feet. I hung it from my IV post, and it followed me around on my walks for the rest of my stay.

After serving my time, and passing the swallow test on my anastomosis, I was fed real food, and sent on my way. My friends Peter and Cindy drove from Milwaukee to Wisconsin Rapids to pick up Tammy, then to Rochester to pick me up at St. Mary's. I watched "Coneheads" on the TV/VCR in in Pete's custom van during the three hour drive home (and hurt like hell from all the laughing). My recovery at home lasted several more weeks, but since my job is fairly sedentary, I slowly worked my way back to full time status within the month.

diagnosis | surgery | chemo & rad | afterward | resources

Photo 1 - Marc & Megan at the Grand Canyon National Park, August 2000.

Photo 2 - "Chicken with Mayo" - My rubbr chicken on my IV pole. Amazingly this turned out to be a great device which singled me out as an individual rather than just another patient.