The Colon Club

Hello All.

My 52 yo husband had his first colonoscopy on Aug. 6th due to blood in stool and weight loss. They found a 10cm long tumor that completely wrapped the sigmoid wall of his intestines. Surgery has been scheduled for Aug. 25th. Not soon enough in my book.

His tumor is approximately 7 inches above his rectum and the surgeon feels confident he call leave 3 inches from the rectum to resection so he won't need a colostomy bag. Right now, my husband bleeds a lot. With each BM, the toilet is bloody. He has woke up in the morning and found blood on his side of the bed from the bleeding too.

We don't know what stage he is yet, the colorectal surgeon suspects II or III but won't know until after surgery. My question is this...when the tumor is bleeding, can it be breaking off cancer cells and sending to the blood stream prior to expelling his body? I am extremely worried that he will have mets as he waited so long to have the colonscopy.

I know this is a site for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers and I don't expect anyone to be a doctor. Just curious if anyone has comments about bleeding tumors.

Thanks and God bless to everyone.

Unfortunately you are now in waiting mode. When tumors are large it usually means they have been there for a while, and the longer they are there, the longer the cancer has had to migrate. That said, there are people on this board who had smallish polyps who are Stage IV and people with HUGE tumors who are Stage II. There are still parts of the puzzle that need to be gathered before you can really know what's up.

The bleeding is worrisome and problematic from an anemia perspective, if nothing else. I don't really know if more blood or less blood would be an indication of greater likelihood of metastasis, but my bet is that it is not a conclusive sign one way or the other.

They will probably want to do a CT scan between now and the surgery to get a look at the rest of the abdomen and possibly the chest. That will give them some idea of what the cancer has been up to. If those scans come back with signs of metastases, then you will have to have a conversation about the order in which you do things. Chemo, surgery, chemo or Surgery, chemo, surgery. Or some other combination. Given the amount of blood he seems to be losing, I would imagine they will want to proceed with the colon resection sooner than later.

If the scans come back clean, then you will have to wait for the pathology report from the colon surgery before you can really make a plan.

The waiting and wondering is NO FUN!!! I'm so sorry that you have to go through this.

Keep us posted as you get more information. There are lots of people here with lots of experience. We aren't docs, but we can help you navigate this process.

Thanks for your reply!

Unfortunately his doc does not want to perform a CT scan before the surgery, only afterwards. I was pushing for it, but DH doesn't want it either. I think he is afraid of what they might find. I just don't understand why doc wants to wait.

Wow. That definitely seems bizarre to me to not want as much information prior to the surgery as they can get. Obviously he must have his reasons for wanting to wait, but I would see if you can get a clearer sense of what they are!

I know that my surgeon was pretty adamant about having pre-surgical imaging. He was not interested in surprises! And if there is metastatic disease present elsewhere that might need more immediate chemo, then they might prefer that he get going on that prior to the surgery rather than having to wait until after he recovers from the surgery to start it.

But, as he's bleeding a lot, that might not be an option.

Well, you've got a week or so to let the news sink in and talk with your doc some more. That's a good thing. It's best not to make any sudden moves.

how strange no ct before surgery?? it would seem docs would not want to go in blind. if there does happen to be metastasis to the liver it could very well be taken care of during colon surgery if it is operable at the time. sounds very strange to me he has not had a ct or pet scan i would certainly question why.

missjv

I had a tumor the size of my fist and hemoglobin of just 7.1 with lymph nodes swollen 3 times their normal size and I was just a Stage IIa. You really just don't know until they get in there. My cancer resulted from having a high micro-satellite instability, so it really wasn't the kind that spreads easily even though it grew quite large.

I had a tiny " bleeding polyp" in sigmoid which the colon-rectal surgeon was sure was benign. It ended up being classified as a T3N1MO stage III. Size does NOT count.

I had a CT scan before surgery which did showed "something" in the liver, surgeon went in for a look see at the time of my LAR and confirmed that they are cysts.

I hope your husband moves along into surgery/treatment quickly - bleeding is not good.

Joy
NED