Adenocarcinoma - just diagnosed

Awww thank you so much with words of encouragement. I will use your ideas of packing my bag with extra things and journaling. I made an appointment with a social worker to start talking g one day before my surgery and maybe beyond.

Lou, I am 65 and had my first hospital stay and surgery in April when I had my LAR. I went right into a temporary ileostomy, and I was just blind with anxiety in the days leading up to the surgery. There is no way to know what to expect. It will be ok. It will be scary, and different, and you will amaze yourself how strong and adaptive you are. You will draw on strengths you didn’t realize you had.
There are wonderful nurses and doctors and helpful people all along the way. I keep a pad with me always and wrote down EVERY question that crossed my mind.
I promise you it will be ok. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. I may have some similar experiences that could help you.
You got this! Sending 💗🌹

@lou3 First of all, sending you a big, big hug.
I too was a nervous wreck before my LAR, so I started psychotherapy and meditation. Also Dr. Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 is starting to help me (it takes several weeks of pratice). It is important to share your feelings with your husband and anyone close to you, because then they will understand your behavior and be able to provide better support. I learned it the hard way: trying to protect my parents from being anxious because of my health, I increased my own anxiety ten-fold. Once I told them, I could breathe more freely and focus on being as calm as possible. Writing down what you feel in a diary can also be helpful.
Something else that helped me was to make an appointment with the surgeon and bombard him with about 15 questions related to the surgery, the hospital stay and the early convalescence. Also talking with someone who had gone through the same surgery (mine was a two-stage Turnbull-Cutait pullthrough with coloanal anastomosis, which is a form of TME without a stoma).
Finally, I also took a short trip with my husband to a place I had long wanted to visit, just before the surgery, leaving 2 days for the prep.
Also, preparing things that would occupy me through the hours at the hospital: a book that wouldn't need me to concentrate much, a video game, and crocheting, and a stress relief ball or small stuffed animal.
You might want to take your own wipes to the hospital, without alcohol or fragrance. Pack anything you feel will make you feel good about yourself and relaxed. It might be make-up, your favorite perfume, your favorite hydrating cream or oil for massages, your favorite earings, aroma-therapy difusor, an electric cushion, etc. Preparing your bag with feel good things can help you relax a little.

Scared to death! 4 more days to LAR. I’ve never had surgery before and I’m 65 years old female. Any words of advice on how to deal with feelings leading up to surgery? I don’t want to scare my husband with all my feelings.

I don't blame you for not liking driving early morning hours across Minnesota.

If you can, have one of the doctors put that travel restriction in your chart.

If you register and go to Mayo's patient portal, you can view your appointments , who they are with and all patient instructions. If they are procedures, you can see what they are and the required prep.

There's also a messaging system there, but that's for things which can accept several day response.
https://account.mayoclinic.org/account.mayoclinic.org/b2c_1a_patient_signup_signin/oauth2/v2.0/authorize

For @cvestor
If your medical health experience has already started out this badly, you seriously need to seek out something elsewhere, like now!
You don't deserve any aggravation right now.
Get referrals from hospitals, clinics, your friends, health providers.
Best of all Best wishes to you!
Paul

Is there any way to get communication from the medical staff about what is going to happen as far as treatment for anal cancer Am suppose to have a nurse navigator which I think all she does is collect a paycheck Call, leave message no return calls nothing from any body Appointments set up & have no idea why and keep telling them I do not do mornings as I am 5+ hours away and no way can I do a 8 a m appointments Folks think I can get up at midnight and drive across the state with jumping deer No problem Anybody got any ideas????

I was first programmed for 25 radiotherapy sessions with 3 pills of Xeloda on the days of the sessions. Then they added three more sessions. Actually, it was around session 23 and 24 that I felt the paresthesia. I called the oncologist and he's the one who told me to stop taking the Xeloda; he said it had been enough. RT ended mid March 2023.
All my MRI and CT Scans afterwards were clean.
At the end of November, a colonoscopy showed a pre-cancerous adenoma growing close to the radiated area.
I had a recto-vaginal fistula that had formed in the midst of the necrotized rectal tissue extremely close to the sphincter and I had the adenoma facing it. It was very complicated to fix the fistula and after much debate and consultations with a full team of experts, we decided on a TME (total resection of the rectum, mesorectum and sygmoid) in the form of a pullthrough to avoid a temporary ostomy. The biopsy of the resected tissues and organs was negative and the adenoma was downgraded to having low displasia.
So, I'm cancer free. There still will be check ups, but there will be time for that.

cancer is on the inside of the anal sphincter proton treatment. so hope that is better than the mass old way of treating And how can one stop Xeloda if you want to kill the cancer cells Assume one has to bite the bullet and get through the treatments of the drugs so it can kill the cancer cells Are you free or just in remission

That's a very complete plan, @cvestor ! I sincerely hope it does the job for your cancer.

One tip about the radiation, if your cancer is low in your rectum, you can feel that the skin around your anus and up the butt crack gets burnt. Be prepared with a soothing cream like Cicalfate+. You should also be prepared to the possilbe secondary effects of Xeloda. For me it was some paraesthesia in my left limbs after 22 days of taking it. It stopped as soon as I stopped taking Xeloda, when I reported the effect to my oncologist.