It’s obvious by your lengthy post-op period, that you have much more experience than we do. I would like to know if you had to deal with continuous nausea and vomiting—and if so, what you did to alleviate it—or is it even possible? The first sip of water in the morning causes nausea and often vomiting for my husband. Ditto with food and the only thing that seems to make him feel any better is to lie down until his stomach settles, which means that he is not sitting up for the requisite amount of time after eating.

Hubby’s vagus nerves were also severed but I understand that this is the standard operating procedure with this type of operation—nevertheless, it presents an entirely additional set of problems.

Hope you can give us some suggestions on handling the after-effects of this operation.

I was dx'd with stage 4 in Oct. / Nov. 2019. All the chemo / rad. and I still had esophagectomy in April 2020. I was scheduled to be a guest at St. Mary's hospital / Mayo / Rochester, MN for a week but was extended another week as my drainage tube got infected. No big deal really. My husband was really quite relieved as he wasn't ready to play nurse yet at home. 🙂
Feeding tube for 10 - 12 weeks. It was quite the transition to learn how to eat again. Smaller bites, chew, chew, chew lots of gravy / broth. Some days it's pretty challenging. I've had some post op issues that arise from the surgery as we were told might occur with such an extensive procedure. Diaphragmatic hernia that was repaired just the first part of this year. In all honesty that was more painful (recovery wise) than the esophagus surgery itself. But we push thru and carry on the best we can. It's most definetly a learning curve and everyone must figure out their own "curve" and do the life adjustments accordingly. I'm just so grateful that I wake up every morning to be able to complain about things. 😉
Lori (still trying to live the dream one day at a time)