Angie Marsh

Hello all, 
Thank you for caring and stopping by my page to see how I am doing.  
In February of this year, I went in for a colonoscopy, thinking that I had internal hemorrhoids.  As I came to find out the doctor found a large tumor in my rectum that he thought was cancerous and would need to be removed.  I made an appointment with the Mayo Clinic and traveled up there for a week in a half at the beginning of March for lots of testing.   The good news being that they diagnosed me with Stage 1 Rectal cancer and I will be having surgery April 6th, at this point, no Radiation or Chemo has been prescribed for treatment.  Me, who tends to think I will be ok and put going to the doctor off, had a gut feeling I needed to see a GI when I had blood in my stool for over a month.   I am glad I went and glad they insisted I go in for a colonoscopy, I caught this early.  There were contradicting reports with some of the testing.  One test said the tumor had not penetrated the rectal wall and another showed that it had.  The surgeons were leaning toward the test that showed that the tumor was contained within my rectum.   If they find out different (giving me 85% chance they are correct) then I will need radiation and chemo after surgery.  I was also very lucky in the location.   The sphincter muscle goes from 0-4 cm up, my tumor is at 5cm.  This meaning I will not have an ileostomy bag for the rest of my life, 4 cm is the cut off for a life with a bag.  I will have a bag for three months post surgery while my body heals, I will then go back to Mayo to have it reversed.