So far so good, we hope

(This post contains a certain amount of medical detail – possibly “too much information” for some people – colon cancer can be sort of disgusting.)

I promised to post the results of my latest cancer screening. It generally looks good. There’s no obvious cancer, but there are a few worrying points. My white blood cell count has declined again, for no known reason, which seems to me like a bad sign, but may or may not mean anything. I also have a lot of cysts, which appear to be benign, but the radiologist is going to take another look and do a comparison with an older scan from Boston that they didn’t initially have here in Albuquerque.

From what I understand, it’s not that the cancer might come back – it’s that it might not have ever been fully gone. And we can’t really detect it until it’s been long enough that it’s growing tumors.

I didn’t know much about cancer until I got it. There’s so many different kinds, and they’re all really different. My kind is relatively slow growing, but apparently it’s not very responsive to chemotherapy, and can be hard to beat.

There are two different scenarios for it showing back up again. More cancer could grow in my colon. That would simply be another instance of what I had before, and would be treated in the same way – a small polyp would be removed during a colonoscopy, and a larger tumor would be removed with surgery.

My next colonoscopy will be early next year at the end of February or early March. Not sure if I’ll get that done in Albuquerque or Tucson, but they’re routine and easy to get done anywhere.

If the cancer showed up in the exact same spot as before (ie, if they didn’t get it all and it regrew), the surgery would be difficult and I would probably lose at least some bowel function, and have a colostomy bag at least temporarily if not permanently. That’s because it’s located at the junction of my colon and rectum, and I’d end up losing too much rectal muscle. Not a good scenario! I only barely managed to avoid that fate during this first go-around. I did lose some rectal muscle during the surgery, and didn’t know for the first few months how much function I would regain as the surgery healed. I now thankfully function nearly normally. I never thought I’d be so grateful for being able to poop! (And not poop.) Yay for pooping on command!

The second scenario would be if the cancer showed up somewhere else. The most likely locations would be in my liver or lungs. If it showed up somewhere else, then it’s stage 4, metastasized, and that would likely be fatal. So we’re keeping a close eye on my liver and lungs.

For some reason my liver has a lot of cysts, including a large one. The cysts were first noticed in Boston when we went out there for the surgery. I hadn’t had any scans done before the diagnosis that I know of, so I have no idea how long I’ve had them. It could have been forever. Apparently some people are just that way and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We believe they’re benign but we need to watch to make sure they aren’t growing.

I also have a few small cysts in my lungs, possibly damage from when I had pneumonia as a child. But we also need to watch them, to make sure they’re benign. My Albuquerque clinic didn’t scan my lungs when they did my previous scan in April (they should have). We had to get the scan from February that was done in Boston as a comparison point, so now we are waiting for the radiologist to look at that.

I’m also having a lot of lower back or pelvic pain. It’s not new – I think I occasionally had it even last year. But it’s significantly worse recently. It could be muscular, but it sort of feels intestinal to me. I’ve decided to quit drinking coffee, to see if that helps. I had recently increased my coffee intake (decaffeinated) because John read that it might help with cancer, and we figured it couldn’t hurt. Except now I have this ache – who knows if it’s related. I’ll just have to experiment.

I’m also very tired and sleeping a lot. I suppose I may be still recovering from the surgery and chemo. I wonder how long I’ll still be so tired? I seem to be less energetic than a month or two ago. I remember our hike in Utah and wonder how I even managed. I don’t feel like I could do that now.

There’s no point worrying though, because there’s not much I can do at this point. The cancer is either going to show up again or it’s not. All I know to do at this point is the weekly fasting, which I am doing for 36 hours once a week. Fasting is no fun, but I hope it helps.

Maybe I’m fine. Maybe packing for Tucson is just taking more energy than I realize. This is what my house here in Albuquerque looks like right now.

It’s pretty overwhelming. I get stressed out when my place isn’t neat and tidy. But soon I hope to be relaxing in my new backyard in Tucson while the winter winds howl in Albuquerque.

Sorry about all the gloom and doom recently. It’s been a hard year, but it still had its bright spots. I’ll post a more cheerful one next time, I promise.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com