I had an unexpectedly 'interesting' week, to say the least... Monday evening after dinner, I had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery due to a closed-loop intestinal blockage. I.e., my small intestine had formed a kink and started to grow together at 2 points with prior 'adhesions' &/or scar tissue likely from a prior cancer surgery ~15 yrs ago. It was extremely painful - I looked and felt like William Hurt in that famous scene in the original 'Alien' movie, LOL! I was discharged from the hospital yesterday (Friday) evening, and am now recovering at home with 3 new surgical incisions added to my collection. The largest scar has a nice double row of surgical staples, and looks surprisingly like a leather vest on a Rider of Rohan from 'LOTR'.
Now that I'm home and have my laptop in hand, I've done more reading about intestinal blockages due to adhesions, and am stunned by the subject. It's one of those things that you thankfully didn't know about before, but... Adhesions are an extremely complex medical topic, despite a lot of work they remain resistant to scientific understanding (they are NOT due to any surgical error or bad practice, but arise from some natural body healing process that kind of gets out of hand). and they remain essentially unpredictable in advance. And their mortality rates are rather shocking, a few thousand people die yearly from them in the US alone (and US statistics are comparable with other developed nations).
The surgeon did an outstanding job cutting away the adhesion, relieving the blockage, and in particular saving the intestinal tissue that formed the loop - it had to be pulled out of my body and revived by extensive manual stimulation, due to reduced blood flow... So while I'm a tad tired and will likely remain sore for a couple of weeks, my dominant emotion is feeling extremely fortunate for having dodged a major bullet thanks to modern medicine (and, of course, also having medical insurance). So actually, it's quite appropos as we enter the holiday season. Happy holidays!
Note added: I wish all of you the best of health in 2025!
