Colon cancer

[mrnoodle]

Get a colonoscopy. Today. If you're over 50 and haven't had one (a real colonoscopy, not a barium enema), pick up the phone and make an appointment to get one.

We took dad into the hospital yesterday for tests to see what was causing him to run a low-grade fever and to lose weight. I think my foreshadowing was blunt enough that you can guess what the test revealed. Although a sigmoid something or other and barium enema 3 years ago came back clean, a full colonoscopy revealed a polyp large enough to cause 60% blockage of his colon. The pathology results come back tomorrow, but the doctor says that he's certain that the tumor is malignant.

How long he's had it, no one knows. Once they've verified malignancy, they'll schedule more scans/tests/pokings/cuttings to find out how far it has spread. At this point, all we can hope for is that it's not in his lymph nodes -- but that's a long shot. Nothing that big on the inside could have failed to involve something on the outside.

Anyway, we're at the start of a long, hard road. At best, we have surgery and recovery to deal with. At worst (and what is with every passing hour looking more probable), mom won't get to grow old with her soulmate, and our family will be dealing with the umpteenth cancer death in 20 years.

I was going to post this in the support group thread, but I have a feeling I'll be writing a few more posts about it.

I feel like someone has been punching me in the head for the last 24 hours.

Thanks in advance for any prayers and good wishes you can send out.