My cancer.

My fight against cancer.

It was in August 2006 that I went to the hospital in Austin, Texas. I had been having problems the last year or so with abdomen pain and passing a little blood. The pain had gotten really bad so I thought I'd better have a doctor take a look. Due to the location I wasn't too motivated to get medical help but I couldn't take the pain any longer. I expected to find out I had hemmoroids. I arrived at the emergency room around 5 on a Friday afternoon and finally saw a doctor around midnight. They did a scan and then rolled me back to my little curtained alcove where the doctor told me she thought I had colon cancer and she would be admitting me to the hospital then and there. A colonoscopy was scheduled and a week or so later I was diagnosed. When the surgeon told me the details of the procedure he wanted to perform I was a little shook up. Life as I had known it was over. Soon I was overwhelmed with a million details.

Here's a brief description of what they did to me.

To perform a colostomy, the surgeon makes an opening through the skin on your abdomen and connects your bowel to that opening. This opening is called a stoma or, sometimes, a colostomy. Your stool passes out of your body through the opening. A disposable bag is attached over the opening to collect stools. Sometimes the entire lower colon or rectum is removed because it is diseased; in those cases, the colostomy will be permanent.

When I regained consciousness I can only compare the pain to the last scene in Braveheart.

And I would soon find out the cancer had spread to my lymph system and I would be getting chemo and radiation treatments.

More to come.