Surgery day is finally here. My sister, Pat, came to stay with me and to help me through the first week of recovery. The doctor was able to do a resection by removing about 18 inches of the colon. The tumor had gone through the wall of the colon but no other organs were affected. He also took out 28 lymph nodes and so we waited for the pathology reports. In the meantime, I began the recovery from the surgery, itself. When pathology reports came in, 9 of the lymph nodes were affected. This meant definite chemotherapy.