Here’s the thing, my symptoms didn’t even seem to be colon or cancer related. I was having fatigue, out of breath, tired all the time.
Not unusual for a dude with 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure, but the blood work was showing anemia, low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin, small red blood cells.
Something was chewing up the blood, but it wasn’t clear what.
Enter the colonoscopy/endoscopy… 17 polyps, 2 of which unusually large (20mm and 30mm). But NOT cancerous. Not even pre-cancer.
Rule of thumb is anything more than 5 or bigger than 5mm, you get re-checked 6 months later.
6 months later… 6 new polyps, and a 20mm monster that was full blown invasive stage 2 cancer.
Went under the knife 2/19, they pulled my sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes. If the cancer got into the lymph system, that’s stage 3 and cause for chemo.
Well, they got it all! No stage 3! But I’ve kinda been rolling around in bed ever since. 2 more weeks of recovery.
hey, good luck on recovery. I don’t know much about cancer recovery, but i’ve had so many gastro surgeries that they named a room after me at the hospital on the trauma ward. if you ever need a listening ear, send me a dm.
When you’re down to the last 100 ml of saline and reprogram the pump to slow down so it won’t run out so the alarm doesn’t go off and then you page your nurse, just FYI that’s too far. That’s the one that really got me in trouble
Just coming back now after my stage 2 surgery…
Here’s the thing, my symptoms didn’t even seem to be colon or cancer related. I was having fatigue, out of breath, tired all the time.
Not unusual for a dude with 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure, but the blood work was showing anemia, low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin, small red blood cells.
Something was chewing up the blood, but it wasn’t clear what.
Enter the colonoscopy/endoscopy… 17 polyps, 2 of which unusually large (20mm and 30mm). But NOT cancerous. Not even pre-cancer.
Rule of thumb is anything more than 5 or bigger than 5mm, you get re-checked 6 months later.
6 months later… 6 new polyps, and a 20mm monster that was full blown invasive stage 2 cancer.
Went under the knife 2/19, they pulled my sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes. If the cancer got into the lymph system, that’s stage 3 and cause for chemo.
Well, they got it all! No stage 3! But I’ve kinda been rolling around in bed ever since. 2 more weeks of recovery.
God damn, good catch! Wishing you the best of luck in your recovery and your remission.
Yeah, I tell this story because going from 0 to stage 2 in 6 months is terrifying.
Yeah that’s nuts. I’ve only heard of that in the super aggressive cancers like glioblastoma
Best of luck on your recovery!
Thanks!
hey, good luck on recovery. I don’t know much about cancer recovery, but i’ve had so many gastro surgeries that they named a room after me at the hospital on the trauma ward. if you ever need a listening ear, send me a dm.
Between my wife and myself, we’re in the same boat with the Emergency Room.
“Oh, room 13? Yeah, we know where that is…”
have they gotten on your case for muting the iv pumps yet? they’re so easy to mute and i don’t need hearing loss, right?
We bug them and make them do it until they get sick of hearing from us and mute it themselves. LOL.
When you’re down to the last 100 ml of saline and reprogram the pump to slow down so it won’t run out so the alarm doesn’t go off and then you page your nurse, just FYI that’s too far. That’s the one that really got me in trouble
That’s awesome! I hope you have clear sailing and everything is rainbows from now on!
Working on it, Friday was a tough day. Lots of pain and feeling sick. 🙁 Pretty much lost the whole day.
But our kid and his wife came over to help out and that was good!
Family is what gets us through things like this.