My Story As a Colorectal Cancer Patient

A Former Colorectal Cancer Patient’s Introduction

Allow me to introduce myself. Hi, I am George, I was diagnosed with early-stage three colon cancer in June of 2013.

My world was turned upside down in a matter of a few days. The process began with a normal colonoscopy on a Wednesday morning.

Then by Friday afternoon, I learned that I had a positive test for cancer. Cancer cells were found in my lower colon area.

Now What? a New Cancer Patient Said

Now I was asking now what, where to now? Being obviously new at this, we “my wife and I” were being directed from one appointment to another over the next week to ten days. We worked our way through CT scans, and an extensive MRI. There were blood tests done etc.

We were basically at the mercy of the doctors and their staff. This was a very difficult period of time, as we were trying to find out, where, and how extensively did I have the dreaded C word.

Then the word came in. It was definitely concentrated to a tumor in the lower large colon and it could possibly have gotten into lymph nodes through the wall of the colon in one small area. But no one knew for sure.

So with this in mind, they put together a plan of attack for beating this. Here is the plan we received by the end of June 2013.

The Colon Cancer Treatment Plan

Here is what I went through over the next 11 months of my life. I had planned out 27 treatments of radiation with Chemo being administered by pills during the radiation sessions. Then after that 5 1/2 weeks of time, we shut down for healing for a little over 60 days.

This went from mid-September until my scheduled colon surgery in early December. after the treatments I did indeed need time to heal up because the radiation had indeed been an experience and I did need to heal up in my entire groin area.

Then came my major colon surgery. I had several feet of my large intestine removed as well as all of the lower posterior colon wall area. An ostomy was built into my lower abdomen area to replace what had to be removed.

 After the surgery, I recovered for six weeks. Then came 5 months of 8 Chemo drip sessions, where I was hooked up to a 48-hour portable chemo hook-up. This was done every two weeks on the schedule.

I was CT scanned and declared cancer-free, just one week short of a full year after I found out I had cancer.

Since that time June 2014,  I have gone through many learning experiences. In the time since then, I have a few things that I would like to share. Here’s hoping if I can help just a few people it will be worth all of my efforts.

I Have Some Things To Share

So in a way, I believe I may have a few things I can share with you. If you have an ostomy, you can relate to most of the things I am going to be writing about.

I have had my ostomy for over 3 years. I would like to say that things have gone along swimmingly but I would be lying to you if I said that.

That’s not true, nor can I say that things have been really miserable because of the changes that I have experienced in my life since.

The bottom line, if I may grant myself the privilege to share, is that many things have changed. Well actually almost everything has changed since the 6 1/2 hour colon surgery in December of 2013.

This whole site is me sharing with you my experiences, my feelings, and maybe I can sprinkle in a few things along the way that may actually help someone else out there that is going through any part of my trip. The reason for my sharing is that I now live permanently with an ostomy.

Here’s to better days for you!