My first indication that anything was wrong was in the beginning of 2011. I was having problems with what I (and my doctor) thought was constipation. My symptoms began getting a little worse in October. I compared some of my issues with a friend who had gone through colitis. When I went to the doctor in November, she thought that was a possibility but no for sure diagnosis at this time.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2011 my journey began in earnest. I had been having stomach pain since late October. I called before school to make a doctor's appointment for that afternoon. I went to school, did my 8:00 duty, and realized there was no way I could teach that day. Luckily, there was an extra sub on campus so I was able to leave right away, rather than waiting for a sub to show up. When I got to my car, I called and changed my appointment to the first one available that morning. When I saw the doctor, she thought I might have some kind of gastrointestinal infection. She ordered lab work, gave me a prescription and I went home and slept.

About 9:00 that night I was also vomiting and I noticed blood in my stool. I called Josh and Angie and Angie came and took me to ER. The ER doctor decided to admit me. Many tests were run but the most pressing issue was that I seemed to have some internal bleeding somewhere. I was, at this time, still on coumadin from the blood clot I had in August, 2010. The first thing was to get me off the coumadin. I was anemic due to the blood loss and needed a transfusion. I received 3 units of blood and 2 units of platelets to flush the coumadin from my system. I remained in the hospital for 2 days and many tests were run with nothing definite being found.

On December 8th, I had a follow-up appointment with the GI doctor. He was planning to have me do a procedure that had me swallow a capsule with a small camera in it. I would remain at Kaiser all day while a computer would read the camera as it traveled through my digestive system. As we were talking, the doctor asked me several questions and then told me that even though I had had a clean, routine colonoscopy in August, 2009, he thought he should do another colonoscopy. I replied that I had a couple of weeks off in a couple of weeks. He said he didn't think we should wait that long and asked if I could come in the next day. Luckily, Jordan was staying at my house, doing some work for us, and was available to take me.

We went in the next morning. After the procedure, Dr. Chui showed me the pictures and showed me the tumor. It seemed to be confined to the colon but a CT scan was schedule to be sure and I was schedule to meet with the surgeon. The CT scan showed that it had not spread to the liver (the next place it would go) but that there looked like some lymph nodes might be affected.I have to say, he told me from that very day that chemotherapy was almost positively in my future.

Because this was over the holidays, surgery could not be scheduled until January 27, 2012. It seemed so far away and the wait was hard to bear.