Are you sitting down? Get ready.
Back in Sep 16 I was hospitalized at a hospital in London with fever/inflammation and the discharge paper showed possible acute colitis. I was sent home once i felt better. As far as the hospital was concerned I had nothing serious. The very next month after failing to open my bowels for 10 days i was hospitalized again. I had bowel blockage and had emergency surgery which resulted in resection and a biopsy was done.
Few days later while I was in bed my consultant with a MacMillan nurse came to break the news to me. My consultant though showing great apathy told me in sort of diplomatic terms that the biopsy showed that I have cancer. I asked what stage and the Macmillan nurse jumped in, approached me,sat by me and told me " it's at least stage III ". To say I was angry inside me it would be an understament. What kind of presentation of a diagnosis was that? Considering stage IV can be a death sentence how the hell can you say to someone "at least stage III" ? They sort of justified this by saying "we knew you wanted to know everything so we came to tell you." My consultant made everything worse by saying (it was Thursday) "you will have a CT scan around Monday to ensure the staging". Eh??? They would let a fragile person wait 4 days not knowing if he's going to survive this? He should have been in my position!. To his defence while his vibe wasn't really what it should be when presenting cancer diagnosis, the vibe of the Macmilland nurse was absolutely TERRIBLE. How the hell they have these people doing this part of the job that requires sensitivity, empathy and a certain level of smoothness.
Ayyway, biopsy showed a moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma of the Sigmoid. Stage III (2/19 lymphs). I had a resection with a temporary colostomy. Two days after surgery my surgeon (he seemed like a great guy) told me that during the open surgery he could see 2 lesions on my liver but he didn't feel this is metastasis. I did an MRI with contrast of the liver which was incloclusive. We kept a close eye on those lesions. I begun chemotherapy and 3 months in I had another MRI. Those 2 lesions still there unchanged. After 6 months and once my chemo was finished i had a third MRI, lesions were still the same. My oncologist told me that these are unlikely to be malignant, if they were they would have changed by now after all this chemo. To ensure these are really bening my case was discussed at the Imperial liver MDT. They came back and said that these lesions are non suspicious and non malignant. Radiologist said i should do Primovist scan to chracterize further but my oncologist told me that in view of Imperial liver MDT assessment no further imagine is needed and 99.9% these lesions are bening. So I felt that settled it.
Around that time my 6 months in since resection routine CT scan was done and had me in remission so all was ok and I felt rather content and confident. All I had to do now is slowly recover after all this chemo, do a colonoscopy and for last stage have my colostomy reversed.
Another 6 months down the line (last month) I had my colonoscopy which showed no signs of recurrence. I was really happy now as Hartmaans reversal was finally close. This is from where things begun going downhill (from a psychologist point of view at least).
I began feeling a great pain in my right kidney and I attributed it to passing a kidney stone. This pain passed in a few hours but then a few days later I had a pinching pain in the lower end of my ureter. I thought this must be because the stone must have scarred it. I began taking some pain killers and after about 3 weeks the pain ceased completely. I decided to investigate this further and went to the hospital to have a CT urinary scan which showed no stone and that was all they told me. With that said my creatinine was relatively high (151) which meant something is wrong. The time came to have my second surveillance routing CT scan. Did the scan went home and very quickly I got a letter to see my consultant.
During the appointment he told me that I have a recurrence in the upper urinary tract, right side, and that is partially blocking my ureter and thus putting pressure on my kidney. Also one of the two liver lesions that I had, has increased in size. He didn't tell me that I have liver mestastasis but he seemed confident in calling the obstruction of my ureter as something that comes from a malignant mass. He called it a recurrence after all.
The CT scan came with the following results and I quote exactly: Comparison is made with the previous CT scans back to Sep 16 and MRI of the liver May 17. There are no enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes. There are no focal pulmonary lesion seen. There is an increase in the size of the right pelvic sidewall mass previously measuring 2.4 x 1.7 x 1.9m and is now measuring 3.1 x 3 x 3.5cm. This lesion is causing obstruction of the right ureter with dilatation of the right pelvicalyceal system. The right kidney does not show the same level of contrast enchancement as the left denoting impaired function. (I jump a few lines here)
and the report goes on: There is a large 3.7cm hypodence lesion within segment 8 of the liver most likely represents a metastatic deposit. There is a suspicion of a smaller hypodense lesion within segment 5. The are no enlarged retroperitoneal lymph nodes.
Continues in next post
