What can a nurse do?

Dear Colon,

How are you?  This week, we'll learn about how the nurses can take care of me while you have cancer.  There's a lot the nurses can do to take care of us; it all depends on the treatment options I elect.  If I choose to have part of you or all of you surgically removed, the nurse would have to provide pre-operative care like the following as suggested by :
1) Preparing the patient for the surgery by offering guidelines about what an be expected from general anesthesia, intubation, and post-operative care management.
2) After surgery, the nurse will monitor my vital signs while I regain my consciousness from anesthesia.
3) The nurse will closely monitor my orientation, my post-operative pain, and my intake and output every 30 minutes.
4) The nurse would also closely monitor the lab results to ensure good blood count and possible infection (Hct, Hb, Leuk), and electrolyte balanced.
5) If there's a stoma as a result of the surgery, the nurse would use aseptic procedures to care for it to prevent infection.
6) Respiration would be closely monitored to see if I can breath on my own.
7) If the catheter is no longer necessary, the nurse would have to remove it from me as soon as possible to prevent hospital acquired infections.

These pictures illustrate how I can change the ostomy bag independently.

This video shows us what a stoma is.

This video shows how a nurse providing ostomy care.

According Pereira (2014), with the increased number of colorectal cancer survivors worldwide, nursing interventions are crucial to enable autonomy and promote independence for the patients.  Effective nursing interventions include multimedia education program, a structured telephone follow-up conducted by an experienced nurse specialist, and a 17-item patient completed continuity assessment with feedback to clinical nurse specialist and actions to address the needs identified.  More research needs to be done in this area to promote post-cancer care for the patients and their families.  I hope I will benefit from these research in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Jumbo

Reference:
Colon Cancer Care Plan. (2013, June 16). Retrieved May 13, 2015, from http://www.istudentnurse.com/care-plans/crc/
Pereira, N. (2014). Educating and empowering colorectal cancer survivors. Gastointestinal Nursing, 12(9), 33-40.