On March 3, 2020 I found myself in the emergency room for constipation. I was admitted to the hospital because they couldn't figure out why I was unable to go to the bathroom. After 5 days of agonizing pain, I was finally taken in for emergency surgery to find out that I had an extremely large tumor in my abdomen that had ruptured my bowels.
They had to take all of my colon and large intestine. I now have an ileostomy (aka - my small intestine is sewn into the side of my body) and I am now forced to wear an ostomy bag (aka poop bag) for quite some time in hopes they can do a reconstruction surgery in the future. - Update....we were able to successfully complete the reversal surgery!
Unfortunately I'm not out of the woods yet. After sending the tumor to pathology, I have been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. During surgery they also removed 19 lymph nodes and 6 were malignant. The PET scan has indicated that there is still a malignant lymph node in my abdomen.
On March 26, 2020, I had another surgery to install a mediport that will be used to administer chemotherapy.
On April 13, 2020, I will begin chemotherapy treatments for at least the next six months. I will go to the oncologist 3 days a week, every other week, spending 4 hours on days 1 and 2 at the office and then going home with a pump. On day 3 the pump will be disconnected. Every other week I will still visit the doctor to have check ups to see how the therapy is working.
I will try to continue adding journal entries so you can ride along on my journey with me.
