TMI: Colon Cancer

What was yr diet like in the years prior to the diagnosis of cancer?

holy, this is scaring the _____ out of me. i think i'm about your age, a little older maybe. i'm hoping for a happy ending to this story.

indeed.

I was 33 last summer. My diet wasn't abnormal. I mean, I do drink beer. I do eat fast food. I was a social smoker. But really, no more than anyone else. I also have no family history of this sort of thing. It's funny, my dad's having to get colonscopies now because his son (me) has had colon cancer. Usually it's the other way around.

The doctors however have never really said what caused it though. They said that sometimes, it just happens.

***

My first day on the job was Monday. I knew this was going to be a challenge. How do you walk into a new place of employment, tell them that you have cancer and will miss two weeks of work during your first month? I was not the same person they had hired and somewhat expected to be let go. While the HR guy was telling me about how everyone gets a week off at Christmas, I was thinking “yeah right. Like I’ll still be around by then.”

My boss came around to see if I was getting settled in and I asked him if I could speak to him in private. We went into an empty office and I spilled the news to him. He told me that I still had a job and that we’d make do with whatever I had to take care of.

I cannot stress how good this place has been to me. I’ll get to more of that later.

I had to drink the half-gallon of laxative again. The next morning, Sunny drove me to the hospital and sat with me in the operation waiting room. This was the first time in 25 years that I had been in the hospital for myself. I was already getting to be an old pro at having an IV stuck inside me. We had met with the surgeon the week before, and though he was realistic about some of the dangers in the surgery -- like the chance I’d have to have a temporary colostomy -- he was also optimistic about clearing everything out of there.

What he was going to do was cut a good 12 inches out of my colon and sew the two parts back together. (I would be left with a semi-colon HAR HAR HAR.) The surgeon said that the procedure was routine.

They made Sunny leave and wheeled me away to the operating room where it was freezing. The nurses said that the cold killed most of the germs in the room.

I knew I was awake, and I could feel where I had been cut on my stomach. It was like someone had snapped their fingers. It was still very cold and the incision was painful. I could feel the metal staples and it felt like my stomach was about to rip open again. (The incision -- and my still-there scar -- starts about an inch below my belly-button and goes down to about an inch away from my dick.) It was the most pain I had ever felt.

I remember moaning a lot. My next memory is of being outside in a hallway. They took me into a room where there were already many people. I was going to have a roommate, and what seemed like his entire congregation was in there with us. I looked up and saw Sunny, obviously worried. Then I saw my parents and step-parents. They were all staring at me. I realized that i had a catheder and felt my second-worst pain when the nurses moved me from the stretcher into the bed.
I got pissed at everyone staring at me and yelled at them to go away except for Sunny. She sat beside me and held my hand until I passed out from the morphine.

I don’t remember much about the next 48 hours. My roommate’s name was Abraham. He was good company and kept me relaxed. It wasn’t his first trip to the hospital, and as a matter of fact, had also battled cancer. At one point, I was mashing on the morphine button as he told me that chemotherapy wasn’t a big deal. They just put a little port in you and you deal with it.

I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I had dealt with it enough already. After a couple of days, they took the catheter out. The nurse sat me naked in a chair in the room and gave me a wipecloth bath. It was then and there that I lost any modesty. Even now, I just don’t give a fuck. After that, I’ll show my skinny white ass to anyone.

Abraham was discharged and I got a private room. I still hurt like hell, and getting up to piss about made me miss my catheter. Also, I had a drain hooked into my side. It was like a little turnip attached to me that filled up with blood every four hours. And if I forgot to hold it when I got up to use the bathroom, it would drop down to my side and the tugging from its cord would hurt like fuck.

Sunny kept me company and even Beeps was allowed into my room. even though I was so out of it, it made me extraoridarily happy to see the two of them in and out of my stupors.

The surgeon came in during the weekend. They had sent samples of my colon to a pathologist. The pathotogist had found lymph nodes with malignant cancer cells outside of my colon. Which meant that there was evidence the cancer was not contained.

I still had cancer. I was going to have go through chemotherapy. Abraham’s words of advice were coming true.

dude i was worried when you posted that wdyll last summer.

8[

goddam. i'm really sorry you've gone through this.

i'm also hanging on tenterhooks reading this.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the happy ending.

Echoing the above.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t very stoic upon hearing the news that cancer had been found “loose” inside me. Sometime during my two weeks off recovering, the film critic Joel Siegal died. From colon cancer. Roger Ebert wrote a touching tribute to his rival, adding that Siegal did learn that if he had noticed something wrong even a year earlier, the doctors could have saved him.

Earlier this year, an acquaintance of mine had died from bone marrow cancer. I hadn’t even realized he was sick until one day when I saw his picture in the obituaries. I kept imagining photos of me with “1973 - 2009” as the caption. I thought about Sunny. I thought about Beeps looking at pictures of us in the future, with no memory of the time that we had spent together.

A PET scan revealed even more trouble near my heart. We met with my oncologist, the doctor who would be in charge of my chemotherapy. For better or for worse, radiation therapy had been ruled out since the colon moves around a bit, and the target of radiation has to remain exact.

The oncologist said that the trouble near my heart could just be an abnormality or temporary irritation. A biopsy was prohibitive since they’d have to stick a needle through my breastplate and hit this tiny, tiny blood vessel. So instead, I got another bag of medicine added to my chemo reciepe. Avistan, which retails for about $10K. Thank God we have health insurance.

My oncologist is a funny guy. He’s an Indian doctor who has more than adapted to Southern culture. His office walls are decorated with him and his family dressed up in cowboy outfits in sepia pictures, poses probably made at a carnival that was passing through. One weird thing was that he would dictate his observations of each visit into his computer as I sat there. I pity anyone who had to record his dictations. His accent was still heavily present and every medical term had eight syllables. He’d end every sentence with a PERIOD!, like he was dictating a telegram.

(DR: Did you have any diarhea this week?
ME: Yeah. While I was asleep.
DR: PATIENT STILL SUFFERS FROM DIARHEA PERIOD!)

My plan was to come in every two weeks and recieve the treatments. But first, I would have to get a port installed. I bitched and complained and protested this to all of them. Just give it to me in the arm. No, they wanted to put something that looked like a doorbell connected to a tube inside me. The nurses could just stab the doorbell with their needles each time and the tube would be inserted into an artery. They told me that the poison that is chemotherapy would kill the veins in my arms.

I finally relented, and again, I was knocked out for some surgery. I woke up with this dongle thing underneath my skin, just south of my left shoulder. It hurt, it was sore, and for some reason, it was a bit humiliating. I can’t really explain why on that last part.

Two days later, I was in the chemotherapy room, surrounded by other patients, getting my first treatment. Sunny and my dad both sat with me on my first day. At one point, my dad pointed to a lady and whispered to me “That girl has no hair!”

I shook my head at him and looked out the window. All the trees were full and green on that August afternoon. Twelve treatments spread out over 24 weeks, and I figured that I’d see the leaves change color and fall. That trip through the drive-thru at Wendy’s had changed my entire life.

Stay strong, PP. You are one righteous motherfucker.

Thanks for the kind words. Again, I'm not trying to solicit sympathy. One of the reasons I waited to tell ILX is because I didn't want to be treated with kid-gloves when I needlessly busted balls on other posters. ("Pleasant Plains is sure acting like a dick today, but he has cancer so he has the right.") I didn't want to be "The ILXor With Cancer".

And for those wondering about the ending, I am writing this right now. That should give you a clue.

I still can't get over the fact that we went through all of this. I still don't feel comfortable calling myself a cancer survivor. It still feels like something that happens to other people, and I can't get over the fact that there's a local support organization out here that wants to talk to me.

(you know how some crackers are always whining about "How come there's no NAAWP? Where's my history month?"

I keep asking Sunny "So where's my race? Cancer only affects titties? Us colon people can wear brown shirts and run backwards across the Broadway Bridge.")

It's getting late in the mid-South so I'm going to go to bed.

There's a van near my house that has a magnet pink ribbon on it, which says "SAVE THE TA-TAS!"

If you made a magnetic brown ribbon that said "SAVE THE POOP CHUTES!" I would totally put it on the other side of that van.

i would put it on my car.

best to all the plains family!

they should totes have a colon-prostate extravaganza! survivors could compete against each other!

How about t-shirts with one of these on them: * Nothing like polyps before breakfast amirite?

Congratulations - if that's the right word, PP - on getting to where you are today. May your remission period be uncomplicated and clear!

This is mentioned on other threads but in 1973 I was diagnosed with Wilm's tumor and additional shadowing on my lungs. I was given approximately three months to live. My mom had to raise absolute hell to get treatment in those circumstances and thus I became the world's first child treated with surgery, chemo and radiotherapy. Kids were supposed to be too fragile to respond to all three but here I am now. I can still remember bits of the two years of radiation and chemo (straight in the arm, no port, playing 'find a good vein' each time) I had to go through.

Here's hoping your recovery is less complicated than mine ever was but with people around you who care about you and support you, it's that little bit easier all around.

hey PP, reading this thread is like my worst case scenario coming to life - i'm due for the colonoscopy myself in 2 weeks. the fact that you've got through the other side after all those terrible things is taking the edge off my fears though. thanks for posting all this.

Hey PP, thanks for writing this. I went through a moderate amount of ass-invading procedures a few years ago when being tested for what I feared was colon cancer (I had the blood too) but turned out to be ulcerative colitis (now thankfully in remission). It is no fun having stuff stuck up your arse but really, really important to get it done if you need to.

And best wishes to Zappi and anyone else going through this.

Thanks for writing it all out, and I'm glad you're still around to write it. From various oblique comments you've made over the last few months (and that yikes WDYLL photo that gr80 mentioned), I could tell you'd had a Health Situation and I figured it was cancer.

I'm 44 and I guess I have to start thinking about colonoscopies and such. Just about all of my dad's eleven sibs have had cancer -- breast, colon, skin, prostate, Total Systemic Brushfire in one case -- so I guess I have this to look forward to. But my maternal grandmother had breast cancer, too, and she's the one who made it to 111.

More and more people are surviving cancer these days. However, you only need to check in on the "we curse cancer" thread to know that not everyone gets past it.

One of the first things I did was seek out some message boards from people who were going through this as well. I stopped going to them after reading some of their posts. They were far, far worse than me. Single mothers with brain tumors. People talking about where to go to get a will drawn up. There were folks with colon cancer on there too, who had lost their rectums or were dealing with "perforation". Cancer is a big word, but there are so many degrees and stages of it.

After all of this, I'm not as frightened of the disease as I once was (it's no longer a great unknown to me), but on the other hand, I'm even more aware of how horrible and widespread this sickness is.

Again, thanks for the nice words.

***

This is what would happen on days I’d get my chemotherapy.

I’d take off from work. At first, I was told that the chemotherapy would only take four hours, so I planned on only missing half-days. However, with the lab tests, doctor’s visits, and all the time spent in the waiting room, it pretty much took up my entire day. So I’d say goodbye to Sunny and Beeps in the morning, and then get ready.

After my shower, I’d rub numbing cream over my port. This dulled the skin there so in an hour when the nurse would shove that big needle into me, it wouldn’t hurt as bad. I’d then put a piece of clear plastic wrap over it so the cream wouldn’t rub off onto my shirt.

I’d drive over the medical building across the street from the hospital where Beeps was born and I had my surgery. One way that I was lucky was that the med building wasn’t more than ten minutes away. Some other patients in the ward with me had to drive for more than an hour to get their treatments.

I’d go to the receptionist’s window, pay my $25 co-pay, and then munch on a free peppermint while I waited. I was usually the youngest patient by about 30-40 years. Men and women would hobble in , some in wheelchairs, most of the time accompanied by their children who were as old or older than my parents. Lots of old men wearing Wrangler blue jeans and slippers.

I’d go into the lab at the end of the hall, located in the corner of the building on the upper-most floor. The view outside of their windows was amazing. I’d sit and watch airplanes approach Little Rock National, C-130’s flying around on routine trips from the Air Force base, and the usual amount of truckers and traffic hurtling down I-40.

I’d unbutton my shirt (I always wore a button-up) down to my chest and throw the plastic wrap away. Then the nurse would take a needle about an inch or two long, and puncture my skin and port with it.

Attached to the needle was a small cord with an attachement on the end that you could screw a plastic syringe into. The nurse would draw enough blood from me to fill two beakers. The blood inside the beakers resembled fizzy grape juice to me more than the red paint you see in western movies. It was usually at this moment that I would be reminded that, yes, this is really happening to me.

I’d head for the other waiting room to wait for the oncologist to see me. I never minded having to wait in there. It was one of the few rooms in the whole place that was lit with lamps and track lighting instead of those awful flourescent bulbs. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere else to go and it wasn’t like I was much looking forward to going behind the door. The TV was usually a little loud (old people hate Drew Carrey on “The Price Is Right”, I learned) and the caretakers always complained about it being too warm in there. None of the patients minded the heat. We were all losing weight and cold could actually cause some pain.

I’d finally get called back to see the doctor, the man with the dictation recorder on his computer. The nurse would weigh me, take my temperature, and see what my blood pressure was like. All the while, I still had that needle with the tube stuck inside me and taped to my chest.

The doctor would ask how I was feeling, were the side-effects getting worse, anything different happening. He’d feel around my torso and check my glands. Then he would dicate everything, shake my hand, and I’d head down another hallway to the chemotherapy ward.

The chemotherapy took place in a very long and narrow room with plastic brown recliners on each side of the room where the patients would sit. The nurses would walk up and down the aisle checking on everyone. It looked very much like the first-class section for the worst airlines in the entire world.

I would pick an empty seat, usually one by the window or in the back of the room. There was a TV in the middle of the area by the nurses’ station that I tried to avoid. I usually came armed with a briefcase full of things to hold my attention for four hours: my iPod, some magazines, and a little “Wheel of Fortune” handheld game that Sunny gave me.

A nurse would come by and connect the tube taped to my chest with a bag of medicine that hung on a metal stand next to my chair. The cord from the bag would have another “plug-in”, and in that way, I’d have two or more bags of medicine running through those cords, through my needle, and into my body.

Within an hour, I’d feel the fatigue start to set in and would usually fall asleep with my iPod on. The old folks would fall asleep too, with their mouths gaping open and snoring so loudly.

I’d wake up and soon start feeling more of the side effects, which I’ll get into later. The nurses would come by to check on me and see how I was doing. I can’t say enough about those nurses. They were always kind and understanding and treated all of their patients like royalty.

They would also offer us junk food like cookies and candy bars. I had never had a nurse give me candy before.
After four hours, one of the nurses would come by with my pack. How I hated that thing, and I’m still shuddering at the mere thought of writing about it. One of the mediciines that was part of my chemotherapy treatment was so strong that it couldn’t be injected into the body over the course of a few hours. No, this medicine had to take two days to get through the needle and inside my body. This stuff was poison, nothing but, and to take it in too fast would make me feel much worse than I already did.

So the nurse would give me a black fanny bag (stop laughing, Aussies.) Inside the bag was the bag of medicine and a battery-operated pump that resembled a calculator mixed with a credit-card reader. A cord would snake out past the zipper of the fanny pack and be connected to me through the needle. I would be stuck to this pack for the next 48 hours, walking around with the pack over my shoulder like some awful purse. The pump would make this buzzing whisper every ninety seconds as it pumped another half-ounce into me.

I’d leave the medical building and come back home. I’d sit and look at the computer, but feel weaker and weaker. By the time Sunny and Beeps made it home, I’d be in bed already.

I usually wouldn’t get back up for another three days.

One of the first things I did was seek out some message boards from people who were going through this as well. I stopped going to them after reading some of their posts. They were far, far worse than me.

one of the first things my mother's oncologist said after giving her the diagnosis (stage 4 or possibly stage 5 lymphoma) was, "do not look on the internet."

anyway, my sympathies and good wishes to you and the family. my mother managed to beat the odds and has been in remission for a while now, and although it's kind of new agey/cheesy i do think it's important to focus on the fact that there is always a chance of remission/recovery.

PP, I'm going to have to say something at once obvious for a while and now crystal-clear -- you're a damn good writer. The sense of tone you are aiming for throughout hasn't wavered.

I'm curious to know if you've made any radical dietary changes since all this happened, or lesser changes or none at all. My biggest fear is that my years of fast-food abuse are going to catch up to me.

Stay strong, PP. Best wishes to you and the family. I think I'm going to go for a jog. And eat some raw pumpkin seeds or something.

PP, it's amazing that you're able to write about this with such naked honesty. You're a brave guy.

I am agnostic but I said a little prayer for you PP.

boring sympathy here, PP

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, PP. I'm sending good thoughts your way (and Sunny and Beeps' way, too).

And yeah... boring sympathy also coming your way. Cancer sucks.

What an ordeal! Pleasant Plains, you are a soldier! Hugs!

Everybody's willingness to talk about stuff is different, esp. while the situation is still recent enough to be ouchy, but if Sunny would be interested in sharing her perspective on the big C entering the house as an uninvited guest, it would really be fascinating reading.

"The drums march along at the clip of an I.V. drip
like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip.
I really hope you'll come around.

It's sunny and 75. It feels so good to be alive.
Come on baby don't stay inside.
Everybody's coming out tonight."

DCB

Take care of yourself, PP. I was really shaken to read this thread - love to all of you.

this thread is heavy, i hope you know PP that we all really appreciate you sharing this with us. and to echo Ned's point, this is an incredible writeup.

I am still hoping for that last chapter of happy ending where cancer is 100% gone and PP will live a long and happy life with Sunny & Beeps.

Shasta <3 <3

ill write the chicks perspective on this soon. im too sleepy right now. yr all v. sweet, btw.

I would empahsize to anyone concerned that I wasn’t feeling any pain. I felt horrible and sick, but I can’t say I was in any pain. They tell me that radiation treatments can make your skin feel like it’s frying. That sounds like pain to me. Nausea and that other stuff has to fall into a different category.

Still, it put me out as well as put my wife and daughter out as well as my workplace. In the beginning of the treatments, I would go into work the next day, wearing my little pack. It was a little strange being around all these new people and having this invisible gorilla following me around. Not only was I the “New Guy”, but I was also the “New Guy With Cancer”. Fortunately, the situation I was in made for a nice ice-breaker. There was even a salesguy who came up to my desk and shared his “testimony” about having colon cancer. He had noticed that it hurt when he sat down, got diagnosed, and had his rectum removed. I came home and told Sunny that I had found a “sponsor”, like in AA.

Fridays are a big day for me at the office. I have to upload the entirety of two newspapers we publish onto the web. Somehow, the timing got off and my boss would have to do those tasks at home during the weekend. Everyone was completely cool about it. Even after working at the same radio station for eleven years, I don’t think that I would’ve received the same treatment.

By about Treatment 5 or 6, I was getting confused at my desk, mixing up projects and catching myself staring into space. I’d go into the bathroom stall and rest my head on the handicap bars. After awhile, I started missing those days of work.

The fatigue was the biggest side-effect. I know we’ve all been tired and can’t get out of bed, but this was something else. It was like having every ounce of energy just sucked out. And the sleep I got wasn’t deep or good; it was mostly like being passed out after drinking too many whisky shots. I’d hear the theme song from “The Wonder Pets” coming out of the living room, and the next moment, the clock would say 3 a.m. I’d switch sides to sleep on, remembering to move my pack and not get the cord tangled up. Sunny slept in the baby’s room.

Sunny got the worst part of the deal. Yeah, my workplace lost a worker on those days, but my family would temporarily lose its husband and father. Sunny would have to pick up Beeps. Feed her. Change her. Play with her. Bathe her. Rock her to sleep. All by herself. Even a potty break was out of the question sometimes.

Even when I’d come out of it, I had to lean on my wife. Another side-effect was an aversion to cold. If I touched something cold, it would feel like an electric shock. My limbs and nose and ears would always feel asleep, complete with what I oh-so-cleverly called “stingles”, tingles that stung. If I drank something too cold, it would feel like sand on my lips and tongue. Swallowing felt like I had an icy toothpick stuck in my throat. Of all the effects, these are the hardest ones to really describe. There’s nothing comparable to it.

So Sunny would have to come into the kitchen and get things out of the refridgerator for me. She’d pour some juice and I’d let it sit for an hour until it got room-temperature. Once, I was trying to make a turkey sandwich and touching the meat felt like I’d been bit. I had to call her in again. She was happy to do it, but I’m not quite used to having to ask for help to make a goddam turkey sandwich.

Walking to work was painful on windy days. I’d have snot dangling out of my nose without knowing it until a co-worker would clear their throat and rub their nose. I’d have to make special requests for warm water at restaurants -- drinks were usually too cold coming out of the tap even without the ice.

When I’d yawn, it’d feel like someone was poking my eyes out. The Avistan medicine made my nose bleed. And there was the diahrea.

My memory started to slip, too. Stuff like forgetting the name of my neighbor across the street, a guy who’s lived there for six years and took a picture of Sunny and I in our yard the first time it snowed with her here. Once I was trying to answer a question from a nurse and got totally confused with what I was trying to say. I told her, This happens to me quite a bit these days, and she comforted me with Oh, you’ve got chemobrain, that’s all.

The nausea wasn’t too bad, I never threw up or anything. But I hated so much to finally get out of bed after three days and see a noticable difference in the way my baby daughter looked. During those months, she grew so much and I was so worried that I was missing out on it all. She never seemed to notice my absence, which only made me think about how she wouldn’t notice if I disappeared completely.

I lost some of my hair, but not as much as cancer patients usually lose. I did gain some gray hairs. And it’s weird, but when I comb my hair back, it stays there. It used to fall back into my face after it dried. Not anymore.

The doctors were confident that the treatments would kill the cancer, but then again, they had thought that I had had just an ulcer before too. The surgeon was confident that cutting out the bad piece of colon would seal the deal, and that hadn’t been 100% successful. I would tell my family to not worry about me, but to pray for me. In the back of my mind though, I knew that there were many people who had been prayed for and had died anyway. The Lord works in His own way.

(At one point, my dad wanted to bring over his Mormon bishops to “lay hands” on me. I had to politely decline.)

During this time, my best friend and his wife lost their son, who was born stillborn. It was an emotional time, and we’d talk on the phone about it. He’d stop every once in awhile and say that he had no right to complain to me, being what I was going through. I’d tell him that I’d take 100 years of chemo over the nightmare he was living through.

I mean, it was cancer, but I’d see these older folks in the chemo ward going through the same thing as me, except they were 40 years older. Some had to come in every week. Some had to wear the pack for four days, not just two. Some were going through the process not to cure the cancer, but to contain it. I made a few friends. Mr. Greer drove in from Lonoke and grew his own apricots. One woman raised and showed whippets. And over time, I’d come in one week and ask the nurses about so-and-so. After awhile, I stopped asking since the answer was usually that so-and-so hadn’t made it.

The worst part was just not knowing how it was all going to end up after the final treatment. In the meantime, we just fell into a routine. We didn’t have much of a choice, and all we could do is mark off the calendar days and do our best.

Fortunately, it seems to have paid off.

When was the final treatment? Did they tell you anything about the chances of recurrence?

whoah, you are going through so much! Thank you for sharing this with us. There are lessons to be learned from all of this. Whoah, sunny, you have been so strong with beeps -- and PP - whoah - starting a new job with all of this! My thoughts are with you! This kind of dwarfs my complaints of late. Whoever keeps asking about your diet - rock hardy? - shut up! -- it's not PP's fault or fast food's fault you got cancer. Here's hoping your vessel stays strong. You're a good man.

this makes me so sad. i'm sorry that anyone would have to go through this but even more sorry that it is you and sunny and beeps.

i had the "semi-colon" operation a few years ago, but not for colon cancer. that was hard enough for me - can't even imagine what the chemo was like.

amazing story. you're a strong, strong person.

oh man, I'm so sorry to hear this :( I hope you beat this cancer and make a full recovery.

PP mentioned his diet pre-cancer, and I asked about his diet post-cancer. I don't think that's reached "shut up!" levels, Maria.

id just like to interrupt for a sec to say that beeps is in all sincerity the greatest name i have heard for anything ever

best of luck to you all

tho i dont think you need it

Again thanks you all.

There's nothing wrong with asking questions. I certainly had about a million of 'em. The doctors never were able to tell me how the cancer got in there. They were only concerned about fixing it.

Fried food, sugars, and that kind of stuff doesn't help. Cancer can feed off of sugar. Ozzie Smith has been going around for years saying that you need to eat eight servings of vegetables to help ward off cancer.

But when it's all said and done, people get it anyway, veggies or no veggies.

The only dangerous thing I ever did was, as I mentioned, smoke. But I never smoked through my butt! My lungs and throat were clean. Other than that, I couldn't tell ya. My oncologist even said that it could've had something to do with living next to a river. To be honest, I kinda shake my head at that.

Sunny and I looked at our situation as just a big inconvenience. It was like I had to wear a body cast for three days every fortnight. We weren't trying to ignore that I had a disease that was fatal most of the time, but we didn't want to allow our lives to be dictated by CANCER.

In other words, we didn't try to belittle it, but we weren't going to get swept up in the maudlin tide that some were trying to push us in either.

But I never smoked through my butt!

lol frat initiation

PP, thanks for shining such a personal light on this. The more people are made aware and the process of treatment demystified, the less people will be terrified (and hopefully, more likely to take action) when one of the 7 warning signs turns up in their life. My father-in-law had ignored the symptoms for a very long time when his colon cancer was diagnosed 18 months ago. By that time, it had breached through the wall of his colon and invaded so much of his liver (and had metastasized systemically), there was nothing that could be done but keep him comfortable. All the best to you and Sunny.

I wonder if the swallowable camera is cheaper than a standard colonoscopy now.

Here's the wiki on virtual colonoscopy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_colonoscopy

Is that accurate, moonship journey to baja? Did they try to have you hold your breath for 10 minutes?

(also, my thesis was about endoscopic images and health information + intrinsic emotional/personal nature of these things - i don't mean to sound crass or pat or anything when i say this, but i really appreciate the medical/surgical details you go in to and the way you've written about them in a straight-up yet still emotionally attached way - it's important, tough stuff all the way through. so glad you wrote it.)
xposts

PP, sunny, beeps, it sounds like you guys are doing an incredible job of staying sane through a really hard time. I hope, very much, that you've seen the last of this cancer.

pp, sunny, beeps, i'm so sorry you've had to go through all this. one of my best friends has had hardcore chemotherapy in the past year as well (with good results also) so i have some limited insight into how grueling this has been. your courage and your love for each other is extremely moving.
i'm glad your doctor said this can just happen, there is so much, i believe, misplaced focus on what people ate/drank/smoked/thought that made them get cancer. at one stage after going through all her fairly normal diet history etc. my friend for a time even blamed her own personality, which i love, for getting sick. well-meaning people gave her superstitious books and tapes and advice that fundamentally blamed her for her illness (thereby giving everyone else a chance of controlling the uncontrollable so long as they followed whatever advice the author had concocted).
i have made peace with the idea that this could happen to any of us and i just hope that if it ever happens to me that i will deal with it as graciously and bravely as you have.
when i read this yesterday i could feel a deep reverent silence across ilx. i'm sure there are many people here who don't know how to respond but want to give you their love and best wishes. so, love and best wishes to you all.

there are many people here who don't know how to respond but want to give you their love and best wishes.

Hi dere.

Wow.

Bravery can be tossed about a bit too glibly (he didn't die in that car crash! what a brave man) but the way you and your family are handling this is textbook bravery. You all should be very proud.

there are many people here who don't know how to respond but want to give you their love and best wishes.

Hi dere.

-- en i see kay, Monday, March 17, 2008 7:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

when i read this yesterday i could feel a deep reverent silence across ilx. i'm sure there are many people here who don't know how to respond but want to give you their love and best wishes. so, love and best wishes to you all.

estela is right, as always.

Thank you all for the well-wishes. Dan, en i see, I'm about as good at responding to good thoughts as you are.

To wrap this up, I had my last treatment in late January. Laying in bed, the chemo pack would start beeping, saying it was "low". After an hour of that (worse than a snooze alarm), the pump would sound an alarm saying that it was dry. This meant that I could finally disconnect myself from the pump.

Well, actually, that was Sunny's job. My wife would flush out the needle and port with syringes filled with -- I don't know, Clorox? -- and then (here's the best part) grab the yellow plastic butterfly clip and squeeze. This dislodged and popped the needle out of my chest. Then she'd give me a band-aid.

After she did this for the last time (we hoped), we just kinda looked at each other. It was over. Even if a new test showed that cancer was still there, my oncologist said that he wouldn't begin treatment immediately. For now, we were safe and I could be her husband again.

But at that moment, I think I just passed out.

I got another PET scan done, where they pass me back and forth through this giant tunnel and take 3D pictures of my body from the inside (I had two of these done since I forgot and ate an Egg McMuffin before the first one.) A week later, we met with the oncologist.

The same nurse who always saw me was weighing me, taking my temperature, and registering my blood pressure. I asked her if she had seen my test results. She said yeaahhh, but also said that she could say anything about it. Sunny and I were both a little scared, psychoanalyzing every facet of the way she said "yeaahhh" for clues.

The doctor made it in and quite simply said "You're done". Was it all gone? There was nothing on the PET showing any positive signs of cancer. Even the weird heart thing that never got officially diagnosed as anything was gone. That was it. I shook his hand, he said something how he was glad to give good news for once, and we made another appointment for July.

So even though I'm "clear", I'm still under the watchful eye of the doctors. I'm going to have to get annual colonscopies probably for the rest of my life. I'll be checking in with the oncologist and getting periodic PET scans done for at least the next five years.

My doctor wanted me to keep my port in for another year, you know, as a precaution. I had seen on some cancer messageboards where crazy people left them in forever, as some sort of twisted red badge of courage. I talked to my insurance lady (who I haven't even mentioned here, but did call me every two weeks just to check in), and she said that they'd pay to have it reinstalled, if I needed it.

So last week, I got that fucker pulled out of me, by the same doctor who sliced up my colon. This time, I was awake during the process. They numbed me up good though. As he pulled and tugged on the port to get it out, it reminded me of the feeling you get when the dentist pulls a tooth out.

My dad, someone who can get a little emotional and melancholy about his 34-year old son (and grandbaby's daddy) having cancer, suggested that I got the port taken out "to put it all behind me now." He couldn't be farther from the truth. I've lost 20-25 pounds in the last six months, and that thing stuck out like a motherfucker. I'd tote Beeps around and she'd smack it like she was hoping for no whammies.

This thing is never going to be put behind me. Yeah, I have a lot better odds of it reoccurring than most people. That said, I'm getting it checked a lot more often too. But I'm fully aware that I could go through all of this again.

But beyond that, I've come out a different person from the whole experience. Cancer to me has always been like leporsy. I didn't know anyone who had had it (except for some very elderly grandparents), so I didn't know about the whole culture of it.

At any moment of the day, there are some sick people laying back in chairs with tubes running into their chest. They don't know if they're going to live or die. They don't know if they'll see the next season of their apricots ripening. They're trying on wigs and looking at their changing faces in the mirror. They see their tumors growing and bubbling out of their skull. I only saw mostly older folks, but there's a whole ward of children across the freeway at the children's hospital going through what I went through. And we're all covered by insurance in an industrialized nation. There's also patients sitting in folding chairs or on the ground, and more likely, not getting treatment at all.

That's why I don't feel brave. I had cancer, and I was lucky.

Publish this. Where, how, I don't know. But publish it.

That's all I'm saying. The rest you can guess.

tre: you are the only poster to make me laugh and cry in the same thread.

Whoah, I completely missed this. Wishing luck your way, PP.

aww, i am getting all misty reading the conclusion to this story. so happy for you guys! my dad went through a cancer bout and was lucky enough to come out clean after surgery alone (and has stayed clear for 2 years now!), but i remember how petrified he was (not to mention the rest of us) at one point when he thought he might have to go through radiation. even though he ended up being extremely lucky, he still turned into a sort of basket case. i always think 'brave' is really cheesy, too, but you really ARE brave and your behavior and the candidness of your writing really do make this story that much more incredible. ned's right... i'm sure tons of people would love to read this.

Dude,

I don't even know what to say, but thank you so much for posting this. And, if you're comfortable with it, listen to Ned and publish. It's really harrowing reading, but it's both touching and informative (as chaucer would say 'sentence and solace') and a really sterling bit of history.

being on both sides of the spectrum, it is totally better to have cancer than to have a loved one with cancer. PP, congrats on beating cancer dude.

^^^ this. ss deserves massive props.

I don't know exactly how to phrase this, since it's kind of an odd reaction, but.. thanks. Thank you for going to the doctor even when you thought you might be able to brush it off, for staying it out throughout the process, and for posting your whole story.

I've had two grandmothers die from cancer -- well, the second one's a hard call. I have a side of my family (farmers) who have the "you're either healthy and you stay home, or you're unable to walk and you go to the hospital" mentality. By the time my grandmother went to the hospital with her "stomachache" she was so cancer-ridden that I have no idea how bad it really was. And when she came out of anesthesia after the first operation, her mind was pretty much gone. She may have had alzheimers all along, but who knows? For lack of any serious medical treatment or tests for years, she really didn't have a chance.

I get angry when I see that one in three people die of cancer, because I wonder how many were like my grandma.

Just saw this and read the whole thread. Glad you're over the worst, PP. I turned 50 last year and haven't had a checkup for this yet, but I guess I will now. (Or at least start thinking about it.)

I cannot stress enough how easy the test was. The worst part was having to spend half a day in the bathroom, but I did get a lot of reading done. The procedure itself is painless and you never feel a thing.

it does make you shout out for mello yello in recovery though

Not a #1 burger with tots and a cherry limeade?

PP just waking up in rocovery.
Nurse: "We have Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Lemonade. What would you like?"
PP: "MELLO YELLO!!"
Nurse: "We dont have that"
PP: "Uhhh...Mello Yello!?!"

A man who knows what he wants!

It was like a Tony Soprano hospital room dream recalling the scene where Billy Bats gets whacked in Goodfellas, only he forgot (or the dream machinery displaced) the fact that the Donovan song featured in that sequence was "Atlantis."

This thread is very awesome by the way, I just wanted to chime in and echo and stuff. And PP, you've used the perfect voice to tell it.

For once, I don't know what to say PP, but I admire you and and truly wish you all the best.

Tre, were you able to, um, play the bass again?

You might want to telegraph a bit less there.

Telegraph

Just saw this thread, I'm way behind these days. You three are stellar, and that's no joke.

I for one am super glad that PP did not get an accidental new leg.

Apologies if this is incorrect humor, PP, but what was your first thought when "butthurt" entered the ILX lexicon?

Thank you for writing this, PP.

Ken - I just heard that song in Wendy's this afternoon!
Libcrypt - Had I received one, that would've meant that I now had four legs.
Rock - My butt never hurt, so that term just rolled off my back (so to speak.)
DP - Any time.

I'm also interested in publishing this only if Dan Lacey will illustrate it for me.

PP - I can only echo what has already been said by others, thank you so much for writing this and sharing your moving and important story.

I'm also interested in publishing this only if Dan Lacey will illustrate it for me.

That would be pretty damned cool.

PP, I haven't commented because I'm at a loss for words. You are so courageous (sp?) and so strong. I always feel as though I'm moaning about the little things - how the hell can a migraine attack be so bad, when you have cancer. I am extremely happy to see you three have come through it. YAY. :-)

Is the aversion to cold passing?

My fingers and toes are still numb and asleep. My typing isn't as good as it was. I'd probably be real good at snuffing candles with my thumb and forefinger, like a bad-ass Scout leader, right now.

Other than that, I'm bouncing back. Even had a hot fudge sundae this past weekend.

Ken - I just heard that song in Wendy's this afternoon!

full circle

virtual colonoscopies getting some run today

Hugs to both of you (and beeps).

Wow, I never knew about this til now. I hope you are doing well, PP!

For those still scared of colonoscopies, I had my first a couple of weeks ago. they gave me two shots of demerol + morphine and still couldnt get me under (usually takes one shot for most people). So I was conscious and chitty chatty through the whole thing. It wasnt bad at all. Going around the corners hurt like hell but that would be for a second only. Otherwise a very easy procedure.

For all the yayppisstillalive-ness this thread deservedly has, I feel I should also say WOW YAY at Suzy's still being alive and being the first child (!) to get such treatment.

Sure, I would do it. Sorry I never saw this thread until now.

^^ what he said. I have no idea how I failed to notice this thread until now. G. Baker, as Pittman and I were just discussing on Sunday, you are a great dude to know. Congratulations on becoming port-free! Sunny, congratulations on getting off so easy!

PP - I can only echo what has already been said by others, thank you so much for writing this and sharing your moving and important story.

― ENBB, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:46 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

^ this. My family history w/ cancer, combined w/ past levels of alcohol & bad food consumption, have had me paranoid for some time about colon cancer. At one point, a few years ago, certain telltale signs (which I will not get into) had me thinking that I might have actual symptoms, tho a consultation with a doctor thankfully debunked my suspicions. Since then, I've subjected myself to cleansing rituals a couple times a year, just to get rid of all the junk that can build up in the nooks & crannies (you'd be surprised!). It's basically the equivalent of this:

http://supercolonblow.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/colonblow.jpg

i will publish this, if PP and dan lacey are interested in pursuing this

Just had a colonoscopy ! Just a screening. They removed 6 small polyps. That anesthesia is strong stuff mang