Dancing With Cancer Memoirs...My Universal Smack Down

I had the upper endoscopy on May 16th and it came back all clear. So on May 19th I go in to see my hematologist. We talk a bit then he has me lie on the examination table and starts to probe around my abdomen.

This has become routine for us: I go see him, he asks me if cancer runs in my immediate family, I tell him no, he goes 'hmmm...' I can see he's getting more and more suspicious each time I see him. I, however, am not. Then he always had me lie on the exam table and poke around my belly and always felt nothing suspicious.

Until May 19th, 2008.

That's when he felt IT. On my right side. A mass. A big one. And my whole world crashed around me.

We look at each other, eyes wide, and we both know what it was. Cancer. Colon cancer to be exact, only the second deadliest cancer in the United States. And it was in MY body.

He tells me I MUST get a colonoscopy ASAP and if it is a tumor (and we both knew it was) I would have to have surgery; it must come OUT. I finally quit arguing.

He had his nurse call my gastroenterologist's office to get me in ASAP. I get scheduled for May 21st. On the 20th my hematologist, now my oncologist, ordered me to go to the hospital for another blood transfusion, which I did. I'm done arguing. I also had to do a bowel prep that night also, which was no picnic let me tell you. I'll spare the gory details.

All that time, it was the tumor that was bleeding; it almost killed me before it reached end stage.

My friend and hospice nurse Linda, who took me in for the upper, also took me in for the lower. I was a bit nervous because the doctor really didn't give me enough medicine for the upper and I was climbing the walls after wards and practically ran out of the clinic; I felt a little too much the hose coming out of my throat. This time he used enough to knock out two full grown men and it worked nicely.

In the recovery room the doctor came in and said he was surprised to see me sitting up considering the amount of medicine he gave me. I asked if he found anything.

He said yes.

I asked him if it was cancer.

He said yes.

He showed me the pictures and it was a big one. I saw my friend Linda on her cell, talking to April, our clinical director and boss, with a look of total shock and fear in her eyes. He had me go next for a CT scan. So we went to get that done and then I took my friend out to breakfast. All that prepping and testing made me hungry.

I did not feel freaked out or scared at that point. I figured I'd power through this cancer stuff like I powered through everything in my life. If anyone could kick cancer's ass, it was me.

On the 22nd, gastro-doc called me and asked me if I remembered talking to him (he didn't think I would) and I said yes. He got the biopsy and CT results back and they showed the cancer had spread into local tissue and some lymph nodes.

Stage 3. Advanced. Aggressive. Deadly.

Wow, this is starting to sound serious! He recommended to have surgery ASAP and referred me to a surgeon, who turned out to be a great one, thank goodness.

Now I just had to tell my daughter. I dreaded this. She lost her father not even a year ago (July 3rd, 2007) and now her mom has a life-threatening disease. It was not a good moment. That was a hard moment. In my brilliance, I took her out to eat, figuring she would better hold herself together in public. Very bad decision. Immediate tears and sobs. I struggled not to join her.

I had an appointment to see the surgeon on May 27th. A social worker friend from work called me and told me she would take me to the appointment and also to surgery. I really like the surgeon when I met him and she did too. Surgery was scheduled for June 4th. It would have been sooner but I would have missed my daughter graduating from high school. No way was I missing that, deadly disease or no deadly disease! I would not allow cancer to take that moment away from me.

I went in for pre-surgery blood work on May 30th and was given the low down on what to expect, and I wasn't looking forward to any of it.

Things were moving really fast now.