This all started about a year and a half ago when I noticed a little blood in the stool. I pretty much ignored it because it would come and go off and on and I related it to strenuous excercise or just about anything and everything else. After about six months and started to feel fatigued I went to the doctor for these symptoms. The doctor checked for hemorrhoids.. nothing. I was let go from the doctor's and they basically told me to rest. I took it as the doctor thought I was crazy and that I'm a wuss so I should get some more sleep. The problem persisted and I would get fatigued easily through my Ultimate Frisbee team's track workouts. My performance was still very good but competing/training at a high level seemed to take 110% effort which just didn't feel right. I went back to the doctor for the same symptoms and they basically told me the same thing.
A few months later I was in Dallas working at IBM (greatest company ever) and decided I really need to get this checked out one more time because the symptoms were slowly getting worse (fatigue/more frequent blood). I went to the local doctor here and immediately they sent me to a colorectal specialist. I had a colonoscopy scheduled on 8/4/2008. I don't even remember telling my family about it because it didn't seem like a big deal to me. I had heard about polyps and things like that and figured I might have one in which they'll just remove it and I'll be ok. Well after I woke up the doctor came in and said that the polyp/tumor was too large to take out in a colonoscopy. Well what the heck does that mean?! Part of the tissue from the polyp was removed and sent to the lab for a biopsy. The doctor said it didn't look cancerous but he will call when he gets the results.
I called both Tuesday and Wednesday to see if they had received the results yet and Wednesday the nurse answered in the morning that the results were in but only the doctor can give them to me. This definitely scared me a little. Why can't she just tell me I'm ok? Oh... only the doctor is allowed to deliver the bad news... I guess by law the doctor can talk to the patient but still, I just had that feeling. I got a call around 2pm from the doctor who said they found some cancerous cells in the tumor. Yikes! I stepped outside to call my mom or dad and of course.. no answer. I was surprisingly calm through this. I got a hold of one of my dearest friends Cat and my Aunt Ana. After talking with them I decided not to tell anyone else because I felt they were WAY more shocked/scared than I was and that telling more people would just make me feel worse. I went back to work and finished the day like nothing had happened.
I don't really recall what happened next. My Uncle Duke and my cousin Ryan flew down on Saturday to be with me through this because I had to undergo a series of tests which included a CAT scan of my chest and some other blood tests. This was VERY scary because they found some spots on the liver that looked like cysts. Many people have these and is considered pretty normal but nonetheless, I was pretty much preparing for a death sentence when I walked into the doctor's office which was probably a week after my diagnosis. To my relief, everything was clear and the cancer was isolated in the colon. YEA!
The next step for me was surgery. I would need to have the colon completely removed. My grandfather and my aunt on my mom's side both passed away because of colon cancer. This family history gave the doctors a strong confidence level that this was genetic. The chance for reoccurence was almost 100% so the wisest decision was to remove the whole colon. This surgery would require a hospital stay and an extensive recovery. Since I just moved to Dallas I didn't have any family and realistically no one to take care of me. I decided it would be best to go to NY/CT where most of my family was located so I could have a ton of support through my surgery/recovery. I was also able to take advantage of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center which is basically the best cancer center in the world with the top doctors. We were able to get into surgery about 3 weeks after arriving there. Dr. Weiser, my surgeon (who is awesome), gave me the option to have the surgery on Sept. 10 or Sep. 11. Well that was an easy decision.. Sept. 10! DUH! Skipping ahead, the surgery went well. I was in the hospital for 7 days. It was a long 7 days. I pretty much stayed in bed most of the time. They make you walk around a lot. I have some good stories. The Jamaican nurses always yelled at me for not buttoning my cover up so my butt would always hang out. They would come running up to button me up saying 'You can't do that, you are young and firm, none of the other patients will want to leave!' It's funny to look back on but what did I care, my whole body hurt, I felt like an old man hunched over, I was attached to three tubes and a metal pole on rollers. I had a ton of support through my hospital stay which was awesome.
After the surgery i found out that it had spread to 2 lymphnodes right by the outer wall of the colon. 63 were removed in the surgery and 2 were infected. Thats a pretty good number but it still meant one thing, chemotherapy. BAH!
After about a month of recovering at my Aunt Ana's and Uncle Duke's I decided to go ahead and do my chemotherapy in Dallas. I wanted to give it a try to start living my life again and going back to work. Some people are hit hard by chemo and others take it pretty well. There was no way to tell how it would affect me but I wanted to give it a try regardless.
Currently, I just completed my third round of chemo and I can't complain. Despite it being the best and worst thing in my life right now, many people have it worse than me so I consider myself lucky to be tolerating the chemo well.
I don't really know what my goal is for writing on this site or who will even read this for that matter. Either way, I hope to be able to use this to remember some of my thoughts during this whole process and also who helped me. As for anyone that reads this, I hope I can at least share some experiences and knowledge that I have gained throughout this process. For starters, whoever is reading this, get a colonoscopy! It is worth it, don't be scared, and you are never too young! Look at me! Also, always try to take out the positive in a situation. It doesn't do any good thinking the worst or thinking negative thoughts. And last but not least, I want to show the good people do in this world. Sometimes it may be hard to find because of all the horrible things you see on the news but I want to share through my experiences that there are SO many amazing people out there that are willing to help. AWESOME! POSITIVE! STAY POSITIVE!!!
STAY POSITIVE!!! (my own adage)
This isn't edited or read back over. I'm just writing down the thoughts in my head as they come. ** :)