Wearing blue today even if no one sees me but the other folks who live here.
I'm wearing blue today to remind myself and others of those we've lost to this hateful disease like my maternal grandmother and to also remind people to get their chassis checked. No one needs to die from embarrassement!
Right after my 50th birthday, I thought I had really bad hemorrhoids and then started bleeding vaginally and was diagnosed with vaginitis and put on hormone cream. I rocked along in tremendous pain for about 4 months and then had a heart attack on Feb 2nd. I remember laying on the cot while they were prepping me for angioplasty thinking how my rear hurt much worse than my chest did.
After I came home from the hospital, I remembered that moment and decided to go to a new gynecologist. Well, he practically turned me upside down and discovered that I had a recto-vaginal fistula and there was a lot of infection. Back in the hospital I go for a week.
I had to wait 6 weeks after my heart attack to have a colonoscopy but, finally, got to have it done where they found the recto-vaginal fistula was actually colon cancer and they also found a rectal tumor.
I started on neoadjuvant Xeloda and radiation for 6 weeks. (I thought the Xeloda was going to kill me from poisoning and the radiaton was going to kill me from the tremendous rectal pain when the tissue on the tumor started sloughing off when I had a bm!) I had to wait 6 weeks for the radiation to finish doing its job (I called it "carry over cooking") and had an APR, proctocolectomy (which I called a rectumectomy before I knew what the official name for the procedure was), liver resection and ostomy placement. Thank God for epidurals!!
Six weeks later, I started my adjuvant chemo journey with Folfox/Avastin for 6 weeks and there was growth to the remaining tumor (which is in a place that can't be resectioned) and went on Xeliri until last June when the CT showed growth again and now I'm on Iritux but on a break from all chemo until at least March 26th.
Odd to say, I've had so many blessings during all of this with people praying for me, me making friends here as well as on the ostomy.org forum, seeing my son marry the love of his life, and seeing how God has provided for us even though I'm uninsured and my husband makes less than $35,000 a year - believe me, there's no government involved!
God bless ~
Guinevere
(Mighty Queen fighting the Beast!)