My name is Worth I'm 34 y.o. married with 3 kids and live and work in Mexico City, Mexico. I was diagnosed with Colon Cancer September 13th. I was feeling tired and out of breath so I went to see my Doctor. He thought I was anemic and had me get some tests done (blood, x-ray and ultrasound). My hemogolbins (Hg) were half the normal amount. So more tests were done until a Colonoscopy detected a tumor in my transverse colon near the corner of the ascending colon. To complicate matters my wife Luciana was 9 months pregnant and the baby was due September 19th.
I'm originally from Chicago so I headed home to meet with a specialist at Rush Medical Center. He confirmed my diagnoses and we scheduled surgery for the 23rd just enough time for me to get back to Mexico and be with my wife for the delivery of our 3rd child. It was great. I needed blood transfusions prior to surgery so my wife and I shared a hospital room, she recovered while I got blood.
I headed back to Chicago on the 21st to prepare for the surgery. The surgery was supposed to last roughly 2 hours, however, after and hour and a half my family was paged to a small conference room with a speaker phone. The doctor was on the phone and told them that my tumor had penetrated the colon wall and was attached to my stomach, pancreas, etc. very big. He told them not to PANIC and that it would take much longer.
My family began to PANIC. They thought I was a goner and my Dad had to call my wife in Mexico to give her an update. He told her exactly what the Doctor said. Once he got off the phone he told everyone else to listen to the Doctor and not to Panic.
Basically I had a well differentiated T4 tumor about the size of a grapefruit. Since the tumor was touching so many other organs they had to perform a Whipple in addition to the Colon resection. A Whipple is one of the most complicated and difficult surgies (for the patient and Doctors).
My Doctor brought in his partner an expert in Whipples and they worked on me for 6.5 hours. The surgery was a total success. My pathology report was T4 N0 M0. Out of 38 nodes all 38 were clean. I am extremely lucky.
I spent 12 days in the hospital the na couple of weeks at my Dad's. Today I'm back in Mexico with my family getting ready to start Chemo next Monday. I will be getting a Port-a-Cath put in and my treatment will be Folfox (5-FU with Lucavorin and Oxaplatin) for 6 months.