The Longest Day of My Life

I created this blog so that I could share my journey fighting cancer with others. I’ll try and keep any gross details out of this but I can’t promise it. I guess I’ll just have to pull the cancer card on you and say “hey, I have cancer, give me a break.”

On March 1, 2012, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. In September of 2011 I had quite the surprise when I went to the bathroom. Now, maybe I’m not normal but I check the toilet paper (you know you do too). Well the toilet paper was all bright red! I panicked and thought the worst. I told family members and they helped me feel a little better about. Blood could mean a lot of different things. I went to the doctor and the initial diagnosis was hemorrhoids. He said, you can’t be positive though and if the bleeding happens again I should go get a colonoscopy. Well what do you know, in December I saw some blood again. It wasn’t nearly as much though as last time and I said to myself that it can’t be anything too bad. But I decided that if it happened again at all I would go in and get a colonoscopy. Well a few months later there I was looking at some strange toilet paper. I also had been experiencing quite a bit of bloating right before I was going to have a BM. It was time to go to the doctor. I went to my primary care physician and he told me all the things that it could be but that the only way to really know was to get a colonoscopy. He got one set up for me two days later, March 1, 2012.

For those of you who don’t know, preparing for a colonoscopy is by far the worst part. I had to buy some laxative at the store. Lots of laxative. The day before the appointment I wasn’t allowed to eat anything. I could only drink clear liquids. That night I had to drink a bunch of the laxative. About an hour later I was running to the bathroom and that kept up for most of the night. My appointment the next day was at 7 AM. I had to wake up 4 hours before my appointment and take the rest of the laxative. So I stayed up from 3 until 7 back and forth to the bathroom.

We got to the hospital and they put me on an IV. They rolled me into the procedure room and put a solution into my IV. They told me I would start to feel tired. A second dose and I was out.

I woke up while they were rolling me back into my room and I was feeling good! It was the best nap I’d ever had. And I was positive, feeling optimistic about the outcome of the test. I was happy and joking with Megan. That nap was great!! I could use a little bit of that stuff right now.

Then the doctor walked and spoke the words that will follow me for the rest of my life. “I’ve got the results of your exam and it’s not good.” WTF?!!!

He proceeded to show me some pictures of two tumors that were supposedly inside my body. Uh, are you sure those are the right pictures cause I’m 28? Yep, those were pictures of me. Now they said they did a biopsy on the tumors but they told me straight, this is cancer. I had never quite understood what it was like when in the movies they say to themselves that it must be a dream and they needed to pinch themselves to wake up. But that is exactly how it felt. This can’t be real!

Megan and I were blown away and held each other. It was unreal, we’d never felt worse in our entire lives yet we’d never felt closer to God at the same time. I was literally staring death in the face and I have to admit, I was scared.

We then setup like 5 million appointments and we were off on the race to beat cancer. The beginning of the race though is slow. There are so many unknowns initially. So many appointments to figure out exactly what needs to be done to beat it.

We got my blood tested a few hours later. A CEA blood test. I was told that a normal person gets a result of 0-3, mine was at 22. I met with a surgeon who told me that my condition was too complicated and that I would need a specialist. A colorectal surgeon. So there Megan and I were, too busy to think about it, sitting there wondering if we could count how many different doctors I had to see, trying to wrap our heads around all the information.

I couldn’t ask for a better family. A family who has already been through a lot of trials, especially recently. There words were just what we needed. 

The longest day of my life was over. And it only gets better from here.

Lesson learned: if you have any changes in how your body functions no matter how small you may think it is, go get checked.