Listen to your doctor.
Originally posted on Facebook on May 16, 211, 12;05AM
Listen to your doctor.
A few months ago I went to my doctor for a routine check-in. I take lithium and other bipolar meds that require my blood to be checked regularly. On the last go round, my lithium was low for some unexplained reason, but my doctor also noticed that my hemoglobin counts were low. A follow up blood test showed no change, and confirmed that my ferritin (iron) count was low.
I’ve been feeling progressively lousier for the last several months, and perhaps longer. Sleepy, foggy and unbalanced. It turns out I was anemic and, because I was am neither a vegetarian nor a woman, my doctor thought I should have a colonoscopy and a esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) to see if anything was amiss internally: colitis, ulcers, etc.
I wasn’t showing any of the other external signs of any of these afflictions (losing blood for example), I was skeptical. The pharmacist that dispensed the ferrous gluconate to me suggested that maybe I was just having a hard time absorbing iron. I wanted to believe him but I’ve learned to discount my fear-voice, so I found an ounce of courage and made an appointment for the double scope procedure.
I was a little spacey from the Demerol - usually administered to anyone getting both procedures simultaneously - but I could hear that the doctor performing the colonoscopy found and removed a polyp, probably benign, but also found a very large, “messy” tumor: colorectal cancer.
A CT scan verified that the cancer had not spread. My surgeon advised me that with cancer good news is the absence of bad news. In other words, there’s always a small chance - very small - that the CT scan simply failed to detect some microscopic but deadly cancer cells.
On Tuesday I go into Mount Sinai to have the cancer removed. Tomorrow (Monday) will be spent fasting and purging, and then I have to be at the hospital on Tuesday morning at 6. I will then be anesthetized and operated on at 8am. If all goes well, I will be cancer free later that morning. A 7-10 day stay in the hospital will be followed by 6-12 weeks of convalescing at home. Sometime in July I hope to be back at work, and fully engaged in my usual activities.
While I’m in Mount Sinai, I’m able to have visitors (2 at a time) between 2pm and 8pm. Presumably by Thursday I should be ready. Then I’m happy to have visitors at home if I know in advance.
If things go less well, I may have to do chemotherapy for a well to eliminate residual cancer cells. There is that tiny chance that the cancer is worse than it seems, or that something will go wrong in surgery. But I am 100% optimistic that it’s going to turn out well. I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to feeling better.
Because I listened to my doctor, I probably avoided a much worse and possibly fatal scenario. I’m grateful to our medical system, especially my doctor and the fantastic people at the Rudd Clinic, Princess Margaret and Mount Sinai, for their diagnoses, attention and sensitivity. I’m also grateful that I was somehow able to summon the guts to follow through on the scoping, that I was able to ignore my internal voices of fear and denial.
Thank you.