It began in January on a trip to Seattle. My guts did not feel right. It took awhile for the serious discomfort to go away, and I was not sure what was going on. I’d get periodic resurgences—a really uncomfortable feeling, like there was a baseball lodged in there that wasn’t moving.

Then it advanced a bit more, waxing and waning, and began to include pain. And then I remembered that this was not the first time. It was just different. Diverticulitis. I’d first had it in 2012, brought on by plant secondary compounds, like spicy lettuce leaves (e.g., arugula). That had gotten quite painful, and a trip to the emergency room sorted it out with antibiotics and a liquid diet graduating slowly back up to and through soft foods. Periodically I’d get a little ping to remind me, but I didn’t have another real case until this sort with its different feeling in 2024.

The cause of course, is that I chose the wrong parents. Excellent in most ways, they failed me on this aspect of the genetics. Things came to a head in June. I went to bed wondering whether it would continue waxing or whether it would wane, as it had each time in the months before. Because I knew I’d be restless, I slept in the “snort room,” where one can be as noisy as you please and not keep the other from sleeping. It got worse and worse, until, at 0300, I almost passed out from the pain. It comes and goes in waves, so when that one passed I put on some clothes and drove to the emergency room. There, they gave me a good shot of morphine and took some pictures to verify that, yes, it was diverticulitis.

This was a bad case. They hooked me up to an IV and began two days of “nil per os,” nothing by mouth. Between that, antibiotics, and pain killers, things began to improve. On the third day, I graduated to liquid foods (broth, jello), and on the fourth day I was allowed soft foods. But there was a setback: the infection was not healed. Indeed, it seems that there was a microperforation, so I went back onto nil per os for two more days. Not fun.

Seven days in the hospital was not on my bucket list. I hadn’t been overnight in a hospital for at least 30 years, I think. It is impossible to get good rest. The people were nice, and I heard some great conversations in the hallway. One guy was in for a broken hip because he’d grabbed the wrong walker and it had thrown him. Seems it’s only his new one that has wheels. Another conversation was in Spanish, from a family of tourists. In their case, it sounded like the driver had swerved to avoid a bird in the road, causing an accident and a shakeup of the people and contents “…with all the luggage…”. I imagined a grouse or ptarmigan nonchalantly picking gravel and wondering what all the fuss was about.

It was great to get home, but recovery was slow. And I was ripe for another bout. I continued to have flare ups, and there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to what I was eating that would cause it. I had to abandon a high-fiber diet for a purposely low one, which was a big adjustment. The condition I was suffering from is called ‘smoldering diverticulitis,’ and the solution is to have that section of the colon removed. With the passage of the rest of the summer and fall and the ongoing battle, that solution beckoned, despite seeming rather drastic.

So instead of snacking on Halloween candy, I went through a gut prep pretty much like what you do for a colonoscopy: cease eating solid foods, ingest great volumes of rocket juice, and stay near a bathroom. Whee. I prefer Halloween candy.

Rose brought me in for surgery on the morning of 1 November, and before long I was knocked out and under the knife. This was robotic-assisted surgery, and it was slated to take about 3.5 hours. But they ran into some complications, so it took 4.5 hours. I was out the whole time, and came to in a normal hospital bed with bags of ice on my abdomen and an immense amount of drug-induced lethargy. The complication was due to an old hernia operation, which had caused some internal adhesions that the surgeon had to reach in and loosen up by hand. (Rose keenly observed, “I’ll bet you’re glad you had a surgeon with small hands!).

I came away with seven holes, five of them fairly small. The robot landed with sharp feet across my abdomen in a four-hole row. Then there was an inflation port (they blow the cavity up with air for space and a better view) and two larger ports for doing the main job. There was surprisingly little use of antibiotics or of major pain medication. Tylenol and ibuprofen were the main pain controllers, with just one oxy-thing on the second night. Once the slicing and dicing and stitching and stapling are done, they basically want you up and walking, then to make sure the plumbing works and there are no leaks or infections, and then you’re good to go. Forty-nine hours after being admitted, I had permission to go home. I moved like a centenarian, but I was on coiled springs to get out of there are back home where I could sleep again.

Sitting proved difficult. It put too much pressure on the zone of impact. And I found that even sweat pants had too much of a waistband. Rose rigged me a toga, and I Romaned about in a reclining way whenever I could. I did learn why togas went out of fashion, though. Mine was a winter toga, ankle length, and it proved difficult to hold all the flaps up when using the toilet. Despite my best efforts, there came a time when the rear plopped right into the bowl.

I was pleasantly surprised that you could recover from major abdominal surgery so fast. I was able to put in partial days of work that next week, up to full days on Friday and Saturday, a week later. I stopped taking pain medication then, too. Nap time was welcome—it does take a lot out of you—but it’s been fun bringing my diet back up to include some of the forbidden foods that I had to swear off of since June. Two weeks after surgery we had pizza, which was a major psychological step because that’s what set me off back then. One night Rose made some superb Brussels sprouts, cut in half with the flat sides carmelized deep brown-to-black and then roasted. I probably ate more of those than I should have. That night I dreamed that they were like little race cars in my guts, getting jammed up against a new curve. I think I’ll need to work my way up to those quantities more slowly.

Another thing I was not expecting is that I’m having to learn about my reconfigured guts. Things are different, and they know it. The doctor explained it very helpfully in my post-op visit: muscles and nerves were cut, and new paths and habits are having to be formed. With all those incisions and stitches and staples healing, I’ve been under lifting restrictions. For the first two weeks the limit was 20 lbs. I think I stuck to that pretty closely, although a dead truck battery required some rule-bending. Before going in, I’d beavered up a lot of split firewood into the garage so we could haul as little as possible. At my two-week graduation mark I put 40 lbs. of salt into the softener. That and the truck battery made it fairly clear why lifting limits are important. Both left me knowing I was pushing things.

All in all, I have to say that the surgery and recovery were not as bad as I’d anticipated. In fact, given time in hospital and pain levels, the June event was much worse than the November cure. But am I truly cured? I asked the doctor whether I could get a discount on future colonoscopies, given that there was less landscape to survey. She laughed and explained that two-thirds of my colon still remained. And, yes, there are still diverticula remaining. Hopefully, they don’t get rebellious. In the meantime, I’m gradually getting back to eating the many things I like that were off limits for much of this year.

Postscript: the too much information (TMI) section.

The main sources of discomfort and pain that first day post-op were not what I expected. I had a catheter, and that was awful. (They gave me a medication to dial down the constant “I need to pee” feeling, but it made my urine very orange, Halloween-themed.) My first IV hole had gone awry and filled my right forearm with a lot of fluid; that hurt. And—gas. I was pinned down and inflated, and that caused pain. It really got set off, though, by The Pudding From Hell. Dinner on Saturday came with more solid foods than I probably should have had, so I laid off those and the nurse was kind enough to bring me a nice chocolate pudding. I hadn’t had pudding in years. It was delicious. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe I’ve grown lactose intolerant over time? But that pudding was like a bomb, and I had to process its explosiveness for six hours before I surrendered and took an oxy-whatever to knock me out and get some sleep. I was back up and out of it by 0500 and walking it off down the quiet hospital hallways. Walking helped a lot, and once it was clear that everything was working as expected, the doctor came by and confirmed I was good to go. We goofed a bit on transferring pain medications from them to me, though. I was supposed to get my six-hour dose at noon, but we were in the process of leaving, so that didn’t happen. And the pharmacy didn’t fill the pain prescription until Monday. The ride home was rough. Every bump was a painful jolt to my sitting self. And the rest of Sunday and Monday morning were unpleasant because I was just using a normal dose of acetaminophen. But the prescription combo of acetaminophen and ibuprofen soon had me right again, and the day-to-day improvements were rapid. So rapid that I was off pain meds altogether by the morning of Day 8.