Colonoscopy Results – They found the Tumor
On June 17, 2014 Steve had his first Colonoscopy. Thankfully the prep for it wasn’t too bad on him. The doctor wasn’t expecting to find the tumor because he looked at all the scans beforehand and even he saw nothing in the colon. So he was pretty curious as to what he’d see. And so were we. I was actually wondering if there might not even be a tumor and this would be a rare type of colon cancer. My husband would be the one to not have something easily found. Because he likes to be ‘different’.
Well, that wasn’t the case. The doctor did find the tumor and it’s big. The mass is in the sigmoid colon. He said it’s pretty much the entire width of the colon and he couldn’t even get by it. He tried to push by the tumor so he could see what was on the other side of it, but he couldn’t. He said that at some point, he may have to have it removed because it will eventually case problems.
He also said he can’t believe Steve had no symptoms of it because of the size. But again, he would have had pretty bad symptoms for them to be noticeable since he wasn’t expecting this to happen.
I asked him how long he thought the tumor may have been there and growing and he said years. It’s hard to give an exact time because when they find a pre-cancer polyp, they remove them. So they don’t know how long one grows. But he said from research his best guess would be about 10-12 years!!!
The reason that is something that concerns me is the oncologist said we’d have to have the girls screened 10 years before the diagnosis. Well if this polyp was there for 10 years then really that’s not going to help my kids. The doctor agreed we need to have them scanned in their 20’s not their 30’s. 🙁 I’ll be all over that when the time comes.
So that means the polyp was probably there when Steve was in his early 30’s. Without any reason to have a colonoscopy, and no visible symptoms, there really isn’t anything we could have done.
Tomorrow we see the Oncologist again and will get the results of the bone scan and talk about moving forward. We also have a 2nd opinion scheduled for next Tuesday.
Steve is still feeling fine. He’s a little high today from the anesthesia. I tried to get him to stop at a jewelry store after his procedure so he could buy me something that was, of course, non-returnable, while under the ‘influence’. But he didn’t fall for it. LOL We are trying to keep things lighthearted and laugh through things. This is what is happening to us so we have to accept it someway.
I want to believe that there is a reason for us finding the tumor so late. I’m not sure what that reason is yet, but I firmly believe everything – good and bad – happens for a reason.