In August, 2022 I am outside doing yardwork in 90 degree heat, water bottle in hand, sweating my ass off. I was probably out there a good 2 to 3 hours before I finally gave in to the heat. During this whole time, I never kneeled over, never gasped for breath, etc. If someone had came up to me that day and told me to stop because you have Stage IV cancer, I would have laughed them off. That’s the unfortunate thing about colon cancer, it is a silent killer.
During the second week of September, 2022, I had my first colonoscopy at the age of 53. They say to get your first one by the age of 50. Moving from Florida a few years before, then having Covid hit in 2020/2021, it was very hard to schedule any sort of an appointment. Finally I was able to get in and see my primary care physician and he basically scheduled me for “the works”. I think within those first two weeks of September, I saw the urologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, all the “ologists” there are.
At the appointment, the doctor came in and showed my wife and I the results; a golf ball sized mass in my colon. Of course hearts sunk, not quite the news you want or even expect to hear. This mass was immediately sent out to pathology for further analysis.
The wait to hear back the results was excrutiating. I think it was a full 4/5 days before I was finally told about the bad news. On September 16, 2022, the doctor called and said he was sorry to inform me that it is cancer. My wife was working from home that day, in the office, and I paced and paced and paced some more trying to figure out how I was going to break the news to her.
Meanwhile, my son had just gotten off the bus and came in the room asking what am I doing and why am I so upset. It took a while to gather myself to finally tell someone. I told him my results came back and I have cancer. He was in shock, couldn’t believe it and ran to the office to let his mom know. So I went in at the same time and finally let her know. It felt like time stopped, everyone was in disbelief and shock. Oh, by the way, it just happened to be my son’s 12th birthday that day. Not really the gift I was hoping to give him.
After tears were shed among all, my son finally says, “Does this mean we are not going to have my bday, dad?”. Those words were kinda what I needed to get a smile on my face. I said, “of course son, we are still having your bday”. I don’t know, i just thought his comment was kind of funny and was a good icebreaker for how we were all feeling.
NEXT STEPS:
Within the first week of being diagnosed, I was lucky enough to get an appointment to surgically remove the tumor as well as 3 inches of colon on either side, just to be safe. The tumor was then sent on to pathology for further analysis. The results came back probably within two days and showed the majority of my lymph nodes had been affected. This is not good as it is a sign that the cancer probably has moved on to other organs. The next, most likely organ being the liver.
The next week I was sent for imaging for an MRI and CT scans of my lower abdomen. The results of these came back rather quickly and did show 4 to 5 small lesions in the liver. Not good news. Stage IV.
On to Chemotherapy.