Unfortunately, the news from my surgeon is that the surgery to reverse my ileostomy and open my colon has been postponed until March (it was scheduled for Dec 16). Apparently, the 16 weeks of chemotherapy that I just finished three weeks ago has prevented sufficient healing of the resection area. According to my surgeon, this is not unusual, and now that chemo is over, healing should soon proceed normally in about three weeks after all the chemo drugs are finally flushed out of my system. It's a disappointment of course, but the alternative was to risk shutting down my colon again with another ileostomy in the event of a failure at the surgical site.
So, instead of an early recovery and back to business as usual this spring, I will probably be very limited in what nursery work I can do for another four or five months. Hopefully, after I begin to heal up, I will be able to get some work done, but of course I have to be careful not jeopardize my progress. I will try to get the specimen plants on the site by spring, but I can't make any promises. I should be able to continue shipping orders until March, and then there will of course be a two to four hiatus while I am recovering. It may pay this year to get your orders in early. I will start the catalog review this week and hopefully the 2010 catalog will be up before the first of the year. We will be short of some items next year since there was no time to propagate this year. But it does look like that some pine grafts will be available without having to wait. These will be in the new catalog.
I know it's been a long time between posts, but this round of chemotherapy was something of an ordeal, and little if anything got done except for shipping orders, and even that was a challenge at times. Now, three weeks after my last infusion, I am beginning to feel human again even with the perpetual 'sore buns' due to lack of healing. All I can say is thank god for good drugs, they kept me relatively comfortable, if not productive. Life continues to be a challenge, but we will muddle through it somehow.
