My Journey to Diagnosis

It was a long, painful journey to diagnosis for me. It started in July of 2009. I got really sick and could not keep anything down and lost about 10lbs in a week. I went to the ER and they told me I had a gastro virus and to eat toast and drink lots of water and eventually I would get better. I did begin to feel better and went back to normal life until mid August when I got a severe pain on my left side and started vomiting again. I went back to the ER and they did a CT scan. They told me I had diverticulitis and to take some antibiotics, don’t eat for three days and come back on the fourth if I am still in severe pain. Needless to say it was the longest weekend of my life. I felt miserable and I was starving. But as soon as I ate on Monday I felt a severe pain and threw it right back up. We went right back to the ER where a doctor decided to keep me there because she felt there was more going on.

I was admitted to the hospital that day and had to wait a day to get another CT scan. Once that scan was done my doctor told me I had a hole in my colon and a 5cm in diameter abscess had grown out of it. They still believed the hole was created by diverticulitis. They kept me in the hospital for two weeks on IV antibiotics which were given to me twice daily. Being in the hospital for that long in the middle the summer was a bummer. But I did have a lot of company every visiting hour that passed. I felt like a fish out of water though because I was surrounded by elderly people having hip replacements and such and I was like “what am I doing here?”

So I was finally released and went back to work a couple weeks later. I still felt sick and had a hard time eating but I was told nothing was wrong with me and it was normal not to have much of an appetite. But then the pain returned and the vomiting started again. I was calling every doctor I knew to tell them I still feel sick and was losing weight by the day. They told me that was normal so I went to work everyday and just got used to vomiting at work and then getting on with the day. Finally the day came that I could have a colonoscopy. I had to wait until November because they wanted to make sure the hole had healed.

I was five minutes into the procedure and it stopped I was wheeled out of the room and my mother was told to come in and wait with me. I was under light sedation so I didn’t have any feelings about what was to come. The doctor called us in and sat us down and showed me a picture of a large tumour he ran right into 5 minutes in. This is what broke through my colon and had caused so much pain and trouble with my digestion. He looked like he saw a ghost. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so serious. He was pretty sure at the time it was cancerous but had to do a biopsy to be sure. At the time I had spots on my liver that they contributed to the infection and didn’t think much of them. But now they were suspect and expected it to be cancer which had spread. I did not cry right away. I was almost relieved to finally find out what was causing me such pain and grief. At that time I had probably lost 40lbs and was wasting away so I figured at least now the right doctors will be assigned to me and we could get down to the business of kicking the cancer in the ass.

My cancer was confirmed a few days letter. I had surgery 3 weeks later where they took two feet of my colon while also looking at my liver to confirm that it was cancer that had spread. And that was confirmed that yes it had. It took 4 months and 50lbs before everything was made clear. I was now a cancer survivor and that title will be with me for the rest of my life.