two years of living with colon cancer

 Today is the 5th day of the 40th week, the 5th day of the 10th month, the 278th day of 2023.

NOTE:  Colon cancer begins as a polyp, which can be spotted and removed during a colonoscopy.  So, if you are 45 or older, please get a colonoscopy - consult with your doctor if there is a family history.  If it has been five years or more since your last procedure, get retested.  

Quote of the day:

If God is Will
And Will is well
Then what is ill? 
God still? 
Dew tell!

~ Nickles in J.B. by Archibald MacLeish 

In high school, my English teacher had us read a play, then gave us an assignment to write two pages on this quote.  I handed in a sheet of paper on it with just one sentence:  "I am going to write my first term paper on this."   I did a ten page [typed] analysis of very single word, and got a rare A+ from her.  It is the one paper I wrote that I did not keep because she asked if she could have it to use in her future honors classes, and there were no copiers back in the day.

And now, more than ever, I wrestle with what happened to Job.  Today marks the first time I have felt as though I was able to talk about this publicly, outside the circle of our extended family and close friends. 

Colon cancer runs in my family.  Both of my grandmothers died of it.  I have had a pre-cancerous polyp removed and have to have a colonoscopy every three years.  After my daughter's breast cancer diagnosis in 2016, they did a genetic workup on her and told her the gene that shows a susceptibility to colon cancer "looked hinky" but was not a clear indicator.  She now has to get a colonoscopy every three years.  My son, going to a private doctor in Florida, shared this information with him and the doctor recommended that he get a colonoscopy even though he was not yet 50 years old.  

Then he moved to Tennessee and had to transfer his healthcare insurance to the VA.

Every year and every visit, my son would request a colonoscopy.   Every time he was denied by the VA, told the AMA said one was not required until you are 50, which is absolutely true when there was no family history.  He brought up the family history, and was told that unless his parents or his sibling had been diagnosed with colon cancer, it was irrelevant.  

The AMA changed that ruling in 2021 and finally, in October of that year, he got the test.  They found a polyp so large that he had to have surgery to get it removed, and it was so close to his rectum that we feared he would have to be on a bag the rest of his life.  He was operated on 11.07.2021 and the polyp successfully removed without that happening - but the polyp was cancerous.  No worries, they told him, they had cleaned out the area around it carefully and was sure they got it all.  Then two weeks later, he reported back for a scan...  and three lymph nodes lit up as infected.  

He started chemo the first week of January 2022, took treatments every other week, and followed that with radiation treatments.  Throughout the entire ordeal, he continued to work fulltime at the healthcare clinic, as he had throughout the pandemic.  And then, in October of 2022, he went back for another cancer scan. 

The scan showed the colon cancer had metastasized to his lungs despite the treatments and is now stage 4C.  He had three tumors in his lungs and the doctors admitted there was a "shadow" in the previous scans they overlooked because they thought there was scar tissue from the heart and pectus surgeries of his youth.  They started very intensive chemo every other week immediately.  He went on disability, unable to work any longer with the increased dosage and aftereffects.  The scan taken last month shows the three tumors are slowly growing, but there aren't any more.  They need to do a full body scan the next time.

My son is not OK.  He is angry and bitter, we all are, feeling if the VA had approved the test earlier this needn't have happened to him.   As of now, he is determined to keep up the treatments for as long as he can, but they are taking their inevitable toll on his quality of life.  The two guys he rooms with in Nashville have been wonderful caregivers.  He  doesn't want company, preferring to spend his time in his room recuperating and interacting very regularly with us online.  He's managed to come home twice - once in the summer of 2022 for his birthday when we thought the ordeal was over, once by going three weeks between treatments rather than two, and coming home for my birthday in April 2023.

My daughter is not okay - she is distraught, worried, and suffering from PTSD as she remembers her own chemo and what living on a battlefield entails  

I am not okay.  I do not know if I will ever be okay again - first my daughter and now my son struck in their prime with cancer.  My heart aches, and I wonder why this has happened to our family.

Would that the dew could, or would, speak!