I was going to title it, "Butt me no Butts", but(t) I wasn't sure it would get past the censors. However, you probably see where I am going here.. Anal Cancer.
Like everyone else, cancer wasn't on my bucket list and as I've been a vegetarian, almost a vegan, for at least the past 15 years I admit I was pretty surprised. Especially as I eat as organic as possible, minimal processed foods, and I try to keep the level of chemicals in my house and life as low as possible. I also thought that the lack of cancer in my parents and grandparents would provide some type of shield, but as I found out through this process, if only it were that easy to find the trigger.
The initial symptoms were mild enough. In November 2012, I occasionally noticed a sharp pain when I sat down. However, it had been my best year yet at work and I'd been sitting a lot and I was just into my 50's, so I assumed it was age and lack of exercise. By Thanksgiving, at times it was hard to find a way to sit comfortably - and then days would go by where there was no pain at all. I allowed this lack of consistency to let me believe that it wasn't anything serious.
In mid-December I had blood in the toilet after a bowel movement. That was scary and absolutely got my attention. By this time, the original pain had disappeared and was replaced with a tightness at the base of my spine, but I still didn't think it was anything serious. So, like a lot of other people, I got on the Google and decided that I probably had an internal hemorrhoid. From that point on, there was no other blood except for a thin line along one edge of some stools.
In January of 2013 I saw a Nurse Practitioner for the first time in years as I hadn't been able to afford health insurance prior to October the previous year. The Nurse Practitioner referred me to a Gastroenterologist and I received a call from his office the very next week. By this time, I had no symptoms at all other than the sporadic thin red line. Fortunately, when I was given the choice of seeing the doctor later that week or to kick it down the road a month when he was back from vacation, I albeit reluctantly, said let's do it this week and get it over with.
My initial appointment with the Gastroenterologist was great. He said my symptoms were very similar to a fissure and that my odds of having cancer at this age and with my health - perfect on paper - were about 1% and scheduled me for a colonoscopy early the next week. The rest is, as they say, history.
So what caused it? Survey says: HPV was more than likely the cause, as it is in 96% of all anal cancer cases. It's one of the rarer cancers, only about 7000 cases per year in the US and up until recently, the main target has been women in their 60's. Unfortunately, the number is on the rise (in fact, when I started this diary a year ago, the number was 6000 cases per year in the US) and younger women are being diagnosed.
In the scale of things, my treatment was pretty short once it started. Six weeks which included radiation Monday through Friday, and two weeks (96 straight hours each week) of chemo through an implanted pump for the first and fifth week. While it was all pretty nightmarish, I knew I was very lucky. The cancer had just transitioned to Stage II, it hadn't metastasized and I had an 80% chance of the treatment actually curing me. If it didn't work, I'd have surgery to remove the cancer along with my anus and I'd go to a colostomy bag. There is a possibility of it recurring in the first two years after treatment and there is a chance that at some time in the next 10 years it will show up in my liver or lungs; however, I'm going to proceed on the "been there, done that" theory and move on.
So, that is the question of this diary tonight: How does one move on? Does one ever move on?
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