My name is Gilbert Hudson. I'm 62 years old. I live in Lathrop, California.
One day I was eating and I couldn't swallow. The food felt like it'd get stuck here and
pretty soon it would go down. After about a month of it, we decided we better go have
it checked, They did a CT scan and that's where they found where I had esophageal cancer.
We were kinda dumbfounded. We went down to San Francisco, to go to another hospital.
They had me do chemo and radiation. And then in September, they did the surgery, which
went bad.
I did two more surgeries. And, after that, I was left with a bag on my neck and a feeding tube.
I was ready to just call it quits. It just -- it was gettin' too much.
I'm not ready to lose my husband. (crying) He gave up.
So, they referred me down to Stanford.
Mr. Hudson, unfortunately just like several of the patients that I have come to the office,
he was severely depressed. His quality of life was severely compromised. He was a hundred
percent relying on eating from a can through a tube directly into his intestines.
Esophageal reconstruction is an operation which basically restores that tube that goes
from your mouth to your stomach.
Luckily, there are a variety of different kinds of conduits, or tubes, that we can borrow
from the body.
Here at Stanford, we utilize the small intestine, which is a much better size match, and we
utilize the technique of microsurgery to augment the blood supply.
It's a very difficult operation to do, and we do it as a team in collaboration with the
surgical oncologists and the thoracic surgeons.
We have a certain rhythm that we work together, we communicate together and, I think that
we would all agree, that patients get much better care when you have different specialists
working together as a team, taking care of that patient.
They did the surgery. They took the small intestine, and they re-hooked it back up to
my esophagus, and they put part of my intestine outside of my chest.
We create what is called a monitoring segment. If that piece of monitoring intestine is doing
well, if there's good blood flow, then, presumably, the internal conduit is also okay.
They'd flick it and it would pulse. That way they knew it was still had blood goin' to
it, and it was still alive.
He called it "George." He was like he had his own pet.
After a week in the hospital, once we know the blood vessel's secured and doing well,
we, actually, will remove that small little piece of tissue at the bedside.
The outcome was beyond great. I think, it truly changed his life.
Oh my goodness, nobody knows what it feels like not to eat for months and months and
then, actually, get food in your, in your mouth. It was just a whole new experience.
Stanford is an awesome hospital. The type of caring that you get down there is just
bar none.
He's my love of my life, and we got camping trips we wanted to do. We got trout fishin'
we want to do... I told him all, all along, I says, "You can't leave me cuz I gotta show
you how to fish."
I have my ups and downs, but I got more ups than I have downs now. It gets better every,
every month that I'm -- that I'm home, it gets better. It always gets better.