Treatment timeline

The next step is surgery, which is not scheduled yet. We expect it to be sometime between February 24 – March 6. I expect to be in the hospital for a few days after surgery. Then the first 3 weeks are the hardest part of the recovery period.

10 days after surgery – sometime in mid-March – we will get the pathology report and find out whether I will also need chemo. If so, it will start about 6 weeks after surgery, so sometime in April, and go for 6 months (12 treatments, one every 2 weeks). So I should be done with chemo in October.

We are expecting a full recovery. I might have some minor lasting effects, but it doesn’t sound like anything worse than a bit of a nuisance. I do not expect to have a colostomy bag. There are a few worst case scenarios which would have me ending up with one temporarily, or possibly even permanently, but that’s very unlikely. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen.

If all goes well, the hardest part will probably be the first week after surgery, which sounds very miserable. The chemo may also be fairly miserable – it really depends on how I react to it.

I just want to remind everyone – have your colonoscopies done! I had no symptoms or risk factors and just went in for a routine screening because we’re all supposed to be doing that around age 50. I totally was not expecting this diagnosis. Do your colonoscopy!