May 9, 2011

I've decided not to censor myself on this blog.  Colon cancer isn't always easy to discuss. People don't mind wearing "Save the Tatas" bracelets or posting their bra color on Facebook in support of breast cancer.  Breasts are a beautiful, revered part of a woman's body. Colons? Not so much. People are often uncomfortable talking about the body parts in our nether regions.  I no longer have the luxury of such discomfort, so I'm just going to tell it as I know it.

I met with the surgeon this morning.  Seems the tumor is in a tricky location.  It figures…not only do I get uncool butt cancer, but also it’s also poorly positioned.   While I know there is never a good place to have a tumor, my tumor is hanging out in a particularly difficult neighborhood.

Skip the next paragraph if you’re squeamish about TMI.

My tumor is on the border of my colon and my rectum.  (I warned you)  If it were higher, the surgeon would simply remove the tumor, along with a good section of healthy colon from either side, resection what was left, and send me home to heal.  However, it’s not high enough for that.  My tumor’s proximity to my rectum doesn’t allow enough room around it for such a procedure.   Therefore, we have to shrink the sucker first.  Once the pathology comes in and I finally get a Pet-CT scan, I will meet with a radiation oncologist and determine the best radiation/chemo protocol to follow.  Once that is done, I can move on to surgery and get this thing out of my body.

The surgeon indicated the mass was about the size of a large plum, and he says that the radiation and chemotherapy can shrink it down to the size of a pea.  I have this recurring image from the movie Beetlejuice running through my head.  You know the part at the end when Beetlejuice pisses off the witch doctor, and consequently gets his head shrunk?  I keep imagining this tumor shriveling up like Michael Keaton’s head. 

The other eventful part of today was telling the rest of my family that I had cancer.  My amazing nephew is graduating from college at the end of the week, and at first, I wanted to keep the news from him until after his big day.  I didn’t want him to associate such a wonderful time in his life with such awful news.  This meant keeping the news from most of my family for fear he would find out accidently. His mom finally convinced me that he was an adult, and would want to know. 

Once I clued him and my niece in, it was time to contact everyone else.  I learned today that there is no good way to tell someone you’ve got cancer.  Almost every conversation began with the standard question, “How are you doing?”  I don’t think anyone ever asks that question with the expectation of any answer other than, “Fine.  How are you?”  Instead, I had to find a way to tell them I was not fine; in fact, I was about as far from fine as I have ever been. 

I’m glad to say that everyone held it together very well while we were talking.  I don’t know what happened after we hung up, but I hope they walked away from our conversations with the same hope and faith that I have about all of this.

I will beat this.

For now, I’ll just keep kicking.