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I was 43 years old when I was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. I am married, I have
four children and at the time, they range from 16 to 7 years old. This was the last
thing I expected. I am a police officer, I am relatively good health. I never had any
problems, I never was really sick with anything other than flu, but I noticed that I had a
cold that cleared up, but my cough stayed with me. I wanted to get checked out. The
first thing I had done was a chest x-ray which showed that I was clear, my lungs were clear,
I had no problems in my chest. My doctor recommended that he draw some blood, at that time, he
drew blood and he recommended that I go home and he will wait for the results of that blood
test. Well, a day later, he called me back up on the telephone, I was actually on the
golf course golfing and he said I needed to come back because he believed the lab made
a mistake that there was no way possible that this was my blood work. I knew being in law
enforcement, being around hospitals, being around blood draws that something bad was
happening. It was very rare that that would happen in the lab. I felt that I thought.
After I went back the following day, drew blood a second time, within three hours, my
doctor called me up and said, I needed to come back and needed to talk to him. First
thing he said when he walked in the examining room was that this could be something very
minor or something very serious. He thought it probably was an ulcer and I told him that
I was not stressed out, I did not feel that, you know, an ulcer, I had an ulcer that this
would cause bleeding. He said, I was highly anemic and that something was going on and
he needed to get further test, a battery of tests done. He recommended an endoscopy. He
thought it was an ulcer. He thought that would probably show that what the problem was. We
set it up about a week later, I went for the endoscopy and that was clear. The GI doctor
that went for the endoscopy said well, it is not anything down, you know, your throat,
your stomach area. He recommended we do a colonoscopy. At that point, I became highly
concerned. I still didn't feel that...I still not think it was cancer at the time, you never
believe or think when you have cancer. I never believed that it would be cancer, but I knew
that something was going on. I was 43 years old and I knew that my blood work should not
be so out of line. So I went in for the colonoscopy, I had the colonoscopy, the doctor came back
in the room and he calmly said to me that he had found a tumor in my right ascending
colon. At that time and that point, I just could not believe it. My wife was in the room
with me, I just looked at her, she looked at me, I was 43 years old, I did not know
how to act, I was shocked. He told me he had scheduled a CAT scan for me the following
day and I had to go get a CAT scan. He wanted to find out how far long the tumor was, if
it had, I guess invaded other organs. The worst thing I did when I went home is that
I obviously started, quite like a lot of other people, I got on the internet and started
reviewing colon cancer, read about the stages of colon cancer and absolutely, for a lack
of better terms, freaked out, I became, I was highly scared, I was, could not believe
it that I had cancer.
For an interactive tool to learn more about your colon cancer and your personalized treatment
options, go to MyColonCancerCoach.org.