'Looking back, [my symptoms] probably started before ... But a lot of people experience that, so you don't really think much of it.' — via healthing_ca ColorectalCancer healthing PatientVoices LivedExperience coloncanada JonesyJourn
After months of being told by her doctor not to worry about her symptoms, artist Jennifer Cuthbert got the call she was dreading.I went to the doctor in January, once I saw the bleeding. They thought it was internal hemorrhoids, which is very common for a younger person going in with that type of symptom. At first, nothing resolved within a couple of weeks. I went back and then I was referred to a gastroenterologist, but it took about five months to get the appointment.
[The gastroenterologist] took biopsies of it, but she sat me down after the sigmoidoscopy and she said, ‘For a colonoscopy, they’re going through the whole colon, so there’s prep and you get sedated. But for a sigmoidoscopy, they’re just doing the sigmoid colon, which is just the bottom portion. There’s no prep and it’s not comfortable, but you can handle it without sedation. You’re completely awake.There was a screen and I was watching, and what I saw on the screen was not a healthy thing.
My husband and I were ten weeks pregnant at the time. So, right away we were wondering what it meant. The doctor said it could be early stages where all I would need is surgery to cut the area out and that I could potentially go through surgery with a pregnancy. But I also could need treatment, which would change things.
We did freeze some embryos successfully, which was amazing. It was really good for us because immediately we were planning for the future. When you get radiation to a certain area, it breaks down that area. So bowel radiation was hitting everything in the pelvis and abdomen. It mostly affected my bowels, so I lived on Imodium for about four weeks. Then there’s the bowel cramping that goes along with it. Some people get way worse side effects than that, but that was my main one. And then there were some burns [from the radiation].
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