"So why don’t I feel normal? I know it’s still early, but I thought that once I started doing normal things – eating, working, going out – that I would feel like I was getting into my routine, into my life, back to normal. But I don’t, I feel uncomfortable and unsettled. I have been working so hard to get my body readjusted and healthy again, I wonder if emotionally I’m just way far behind. Some of it I know is thinking about Dad and starting to cope, in earnest, with losing him. But it’s more than that – I know I didn’t have brain surgery, but I honestly feel (and this sounds ridiculous in my head as I am typing) – I feel like a part of my personality was in my stomach. And that part got cut out too, and now I don’t feel like me. I’m different, it’s different, everything has changed. And boy I wish the pathologist could find whatever I lost on one of his slides, but I don’t think it’s quite that easy." -Brian Chelcun (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/bchelcun)
I had similar feelings very soon after surgery. It's hard to explain, but simply a sense of something being missing, on an emotional level, not just the very real physical aspect of a major organ being gone. Having this surgery can also have some benefits aside from the getting-rid-of-cancer-thing. Just prior to surgery I collected all my doubts, fears, bad habits and general negativity and I metaphorically swallowed them. The idea was they would be in my stomach when it got cut out, ergo, all that bad stuff would go with it. It seemed to work for a while, but somehow some of it has crept back into my psyche. Maybe it all got stuck in the esophagus or was fully reabsorbed before the stomach got cut out. I dunno.
I had read that having a gastrectomy can effect mood, and not just in the obvious way that adapting to life without a stomach can trigger a bit of, say, melancholy. It seems this enteric nervous system can play a role in emotions. It is, after all, a very real part of the nervous system. And it's the science behind such notions as a "gut instinct," and "butterflies in the stomach."
(some sauce for those interested):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/health/23gut.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Enteric_nervous_system
http://www.psyking.net/id36.htm
In any case, I think this all speaks to the whole mind-body connection. Alternative approaches to health speak of the subtle bodies. The theory is that there are very real "bodies" connected to our physical one and that imbalances in those bodies can manifest themselves in our physical health. It's said that is how certain inexplicable healing can happen and explains how sheer will seems to make a person stronger, healthier and sometimes able to defy all scientifically medical odds. To me the enteric nervous system represents a real physical aspect of some of this stuff.
Science tells us that stress can adversely affect the body. The evidence shows that a heightened mental state will raise the blood sugar, trigger hormones that will alter metabolic functions. But it fails to tell us why; and is only beginning to figure out that a person simply using the mind can lower stress levels, thereby decreasing any associated risks.
If one can lower their own blood pressure simply by focusing on breathing and calming the mind and then the body, is it really that much of a stretch to believe that the same person can't lower their risk for getting a cold by a conscious effort to direct their immune system to attack and neutralize an invading viral infection?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think, by any stretch of the imagination, that a person can meditate away a stage IV cancer or stop the hemorrhaging of a severed artery by visualizing it magically regenerating. I just think that focused will plays a very large role in our overall health and the power of the mind should never be discounted when it comes to the healing of the body.
If the gut brain is associated with the entirety of the gastrointestinal tract, I would think that the stomach would be like it's cerebral cortex. So it's no wonder that without a stomach and the nerves that accompany it, one's second brain can be sent into a tailspin. Unlike the brain in our head though, the body can function without a stomach. It's just a matter of reconnecting the disjoined parts. The physical parts were rejoined as part of surgery, but the mental and emotional aspects seem to take much longer to heal. This is ongoing and just part of the process.
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