quick history lesson for new readers

If you're a new reader of my blog, here is a quick refresher in my ongoing medical nightmare....

-All of the first half of 2010 sick lots, hospitalized lots with Crohns disease issues.
-CT scan shows I have a bowel obstruction. Medical treatment does not resolve, surgery is called for. Change in summer vacation plans. No longer going to Russia to volunteer at the orphanage, instead do the usual tour of Europe.
-Laproscopic surgery September 12, 2010. All seems well. Go home Sept 17.
-Sept 18 have fever, chills and start thinking to myself, "I don't want to die." So I go to the ER.
-Sept 19 in the early AM I am whisked off for emergency surgery as "something is wrong" and they need to cut me open to deal with it.
I wake up with an ileostomy bag, on tpn, and a huge open wound down my abdomen. I don't speak for 3 days.
-I can barely remember the next 3 months. Not a fun time.
-December 18, 2010 I have surgery to put everything back together. I go home xmas eve.
-January 20th, 2011 one of my scars opens up and drains tons of pus. A week later the second scar does as well.
-Again, multiple hospital stays. Multiple procedures of them cutting my scars open and draining them. Lots of drugs and diagnostic tests. Unpleasant wound care.
-March 2011. Surgery to drain wounds, clean scars and redo them. 4 weeks later they reopen again.
-June 2011, correct diagnosis of enterocuateous fistulas and not a real wound infection. Probably just abscess from the fistula. More drugs, more unpleasant wound care.
-August 2011-September 2011. TPN only, no food or anything, more drugs. More time in hospital. False hope, doesn't work.
-October 2011. Sent for outside consults and procedures to UCSD. Some hope.
-November 2011. Experimental procedure at UCSD fails. All known medical options exhausted. Surgery now only recourse.

So there you go. And this is only the recent history, not my full life's dealings with this disease. So why is this such a big deal? Your small intestine gets the nutrients from your food, your large intestine or colon does all the absorption of water. If they keep cutting out parts of my small intestine, no amount of food eaten will be able to be absorbed into a short section of small bowel. No small bowel, no nutrients, no living.

I only have sooo little left, every centimeter counts. (2.54 cm per inch for my US readers) If I don't want to be a nutritional cripple, I need my guts. Thus a year long effort to try and not have this surgery. The one I'm having in 3 weeks....