Colon Cancer Awareness Month

Okay, call me a snot (and many do) but am I the only one getting kinda tired of hearing about breast cancer??

Now...don't get me wrong, it's a horrible thing to get. But as a colon cancer patient I feel like the red-headed stepchild of cancers. Noone wants to talk about colon cancer...b/c well, that'd mean talking about butts and poop (to put it mildly). But BREASTS! breasts are glorious....we must do everything in our power to save the breasts! The great american breast! So you have both men and women fighting to save the breasts. Sooooo much money and research goes into it. I feel smothered by pink ribbons.

This was taken from the blog of Becca... http://thecolonchronicles.blogspot.com.  Becca is a friend of one of my friends, Kathy at work.  She lost her life to colon cancer at the age of 30.  Her blog posts prior to her death are truthful and well written.  They have been turned into a documentary that I am on the waiting list at work to see, called I Am A Visitor in Your World.  Based on what I have read in her blog posts... this documentary should be amazing.  

I am a nurse.  An endoscopy nurse at that.  While I am not the one who tells the patient... "you have cancer."  I am the one who is left standing there, when the doctor bows his head and walks away, leaving me with a scared patient and their significant other.  Those words are hard.  They represent the unknown.  They represent the beginning of a very uneasy path.  Those words put you right in the middle of a healthcare debacle that messes with every aspect of your life.  The old people usually choose to just let it be... colon resections in the later years are just way to risky... but the young ones... those are the ones you cry with.  The ones that are brand new mothers, and have this rectal bleeding that their doctor just attributes to hemorrhoids from carrying a child... only to find out  that it's colon cancer.  The guy who comes in because he's been feeling a little tired and his parents both had polyps, and he just wants to make sure that he doesn't... but guess what, genetics weren't on his side.  He has colon cancer and his worst fear... a colostomy bag is definitely in his future.  There are so many stories to share.  I like to stick with the good ones... like people who come in  early, find out they have cancer, have their colon resections, and now they are cancer free.  Or those people who come and get their screenings and we don't find a thing.  Those are who we are hoping for.  

It's COLON CANCER AWARENESS month!  So pass the good word and get it done.  I have poked and prodded everyone that I could about this.  I can poke and prod no longer.  Lately, after seeing so many young people diagnosed.  I went to a GI doctor myself.  I was having an upper endoscopy done anyways, so he added on a colonoscopy even though I wasn't truly due in the eyes of insurance companies till I was 40.   Mom had cancer, mom's sister had cancer, and polyps run rampid on my paternal side.  Sign me up!  

Here's how it goes:
Clear liquids the day before...
Drink this concoction that starts out sort of tasting like cough medicine and ends up tasting like salt water.  It's bad.  Completely awful.  
Go to bathroom over and over for about 2 hours.  
Go to sleep
Wake up in the wee morning hours to drink that awful stuff again.... no cheating... drink every last drop.  
Go to the bathroom over and over again for about 1 hour. 
Then get yourself to your appointment.
Get drugs.
Have the best nap of your life.
Find out that your cancer free.
Eat food... the best food you will ever taste!

Exhibit A:  Clear liquids the day before

L to R:  Picture 1, Cheers to drinking this awful prep.  Picture 2,  not gonna lie, that was my true face after  just the first sip.  Picture 3, next day with my IV before going in.

Thankfully I have a healthy colon with not one polyp found.  My next colonoscopy will be when I am 40.
Do you know when YOURS will be!!??  Find out your family history, and act accordingly!