The Beginning

I have to draw the line somewhere, so for now I'll start from here. After about a year of recurring, bothersome gastro-intestinal troubles I got to the point where it was time to see a doctor. We thought it was just a bug that I'd picked up in Mexico. My local doctor here thought it was H. pylori, which turned out to be true. He also suspected more, and scheduled me for an appointment with a GI specialist and his colon-scope.

Before I got in to see the GI guy, Pam went to Mexico and discussed the possibility that I still had some kind of Mexican bug with the locals. They thought my symptoms were very much suggestive of such a bug, and suggested that they would be better able to treat it there than here, and quicker, too. Since I was working in Texas at the time, it was a simple matter to change my flight to go to Los Cabos. Sure enough, a quick test at the Mexican GI doctor confirmed that I had a massive amoebic infection. As part of his "due diligence" insisted on performing a colonoscopy as well. The purging process was pretty horrible, and not even totally successful, but during the actual 'scoping I didn't feel a thing. Sadly, it confirmed a large colorectal tumor, from which he snipped a couple of pieces of tissue for testing.

He suggested that we would get a better insurance deal, and probably more options for better surgery, in the US, so we took the tissue samples to Chattanooga for a pathological anaylsis. Sure enough, it was cancer, and further tests were scheduled to see how far it had gotten.

The CT scan, PET scan, X-rays and ultrasounds all confirmed that the cancer had spread to my liver, but not visibly to any other part of my body. That was pretty good news, as the next place it likes to go is to the lungs, and then on to everywhere. Liver and rectum are bad enough, but so far the prognosis was good enough to talk about "cure" and not merely buying time.

So the summary is this: I have Stage IV malignant colon cancer that has metasticized to my liver. The placement of the colon tumor is high enough that we hope to be able to remove it and then re-connect the intestine, resuming normal bowel function. The liver tumor is huge but looks operable, though it will mean removing 70% of the liver, which should grow back and also resume its normal function.