Worst Day Of Our Lives

This is not a happy post. I can usually put a funny spin on just about anything. Sorry, not today.

You see, my thirty eight year old husband has just been diagnosed with colon cancer. We've been told the outlook is good, since he's young and they apparently caught it early. I'm going to tell you the whole story, just in case anyone out there is feeling the way my husband did before seeing a doctor, and is thinking it's no big deal.

Because, you see, it all started out very innocently. Hubby was feeling tired and a little run down. Perfectly normal feelings for someone who had been working up to sixty hours per week. Until, that is, the company began cutting back on the overtime. Then, with all the free time and week-ends off, we thought he would be getting some of his vigour back. Not so. He began feeling even more tired, if that was possible. So, after a month of feeling really lousy and having several people tell him he looked terrible, he finally went to see our family physician.

The doctor wasn't impressed with his heart beat. It was irregular, suggesting a murmur or possibly arrhythmia. Blood work was ordered. Lots of blood work. Which was no consolation to my poor husband, who is terrified of needles. I managed to drag him to the lab where they squeezed out the four vials they needed. We'd hear from our family doctor in about a week, they told us. This was Friday morning.

Saturday at around noon, I get a phone call. It's the family doctor. Hubby's hemoglobin is at approximately sixty - one third what it should be. He's severely anemic. This tells us he probably is bleeding internally. We need to get him to the emergency room, and don't be surprised if they tell us a transfusion is required.

Sure enough, as soon as we arrive at the ER, they waste no time in getting hubby into a wheelchair and into an exam room, leaving me to fill out the paper work. By the time I can get back to see hubby, he's hooked up to all sorts of monitors and with an IV in his arm doling out fluids. He's already been through the dreaded 'rectal probe' while I was having him registered.

The doctor comes in to tell us he's going to start a transfusion. He believes we're dealing with a very slow leak somewhere within the body, most likely an ulcer, given hubby's age. Hubby will be admitted for the week-end. Our first order of business is to get the blood levels back to where they belong (or at least out of the danger zone). On Sunday, he'll start prepping for a pair of scopes. Yup, from both ends. A colonoscopy and an upper endoscopy.

At this point, hubby is in a complete panic at the thought of a camera being driven around his insides. I was trying to be helpful by telling him about my own experience with a colonoscopy. He didn't find it amusing. Nonetheless, he was a trooper and took his medicine with only minimal cajoling on my part.

He went in for his scopes on Monday. By four o'clock, I hadn't heard back, so I called the nurses' station. Sure enough, he was too doped up to talk to anyone at this point. As soon as he's awake, they'll have him call me.

At around five thirty, I get the dreaded phone call. It's the surgeon. The doctor who was initially dealing with my husband had asked him to come in and consult with us. It turns out that it isn't an ulcer. It's a tumour. On the right side of his colon. We're going to schedule him for surgery ASAP. In the mean time, though, they've already called my sister to go pick hubby up because he really wanted to come home.

And here we are. He's been for a CT scan so the doctor has a clearer picture of what he's dealing with. Surgery is scheduled for the end of the month. They're going to (unless the plan changes once they see the CT scan) remove the part of the colon where the tumour is located, and then connect the rest back together. Hubby is feeling like a pincushion. And, as much as he hates needles, he's now grown quite used to them, and will become heartily sick of them before all is said and done, I'm sure.

The moral of this story is - no matter how bad you think a colonoscopy might be, it's nowhere near as bad as cancer. So, please, please have yourselves screened. Convince your loved ones that they need to see a doctor if they're feeling 'off'. The signs aren't always blatant. It can start out as simply as feeling a little tired.

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