Pain in Nick's A**: The Start

So last Thursday (10/11) I had a colonoscopy. What led up to it you may ask yourself. Well...I'm abso-freaking-lutey sick of telling the story after today, I really don't feel like saying it again right now...for the 150th time. So....We'll just say that I had IBD (ulcerative colitis/Crohn's disease) like symptoms so I went in to have it checked out.

The colonoscopy in general isn't that bad. The prep is the worst part, a little fasting and drinking some grape flavored laxative called SUPREP and a bunch of water. So I get rolled into the GI Lab where the nurses ask me some more questions. They start asking about my ACL reconstruction I had in '97 and whether or not I had any hardware from the surgery. I told them wasn't sure and joked that if they got to my knee the Doc made a wrong turn somewhere.  Then they gave me a little happy medicine (Demerol and Versed) and I come out with my pipes all check out...or so I thought.

I have a vague memory of putting my clothes back on then walking to a chair to hangout to wait for the Doc. The next thing I remember is the Doc and Lindsey (pushing the Munchkin in a stroller) walking towards me. Which I thought was a little weird because my Dad took me to the appointment and was going to drive me home. So why was Lindsey here? Once they got to me the Doc told me he could only go about 15-20cm in before he ran into a growth that he suspected was cancer and sent it off for biopsy. Then told me I had to have a CT scan immediately. The image below shows what the Doc found. It's what you don't want to show up on a colonoscopy, a large circumferential, friable, multilobulated mass.

Top Right and Bottom Left is the mass, Bottom left is the Doc trying to sneak up on it.

First thoughts...don't really recall but I'm sure an F-bomb or two rolled around my head. They sent me down stairs to have some blood drawn and to pick up some contrast that I had to drink prior to the CT scan. Lindsey drove me home where I promptly went up stairs and took a nap.

I woke up about two hours prior to my CT scan so I could drink the pretty horrible contrast. The we headed to the hospital to get the scan. I've done an MRI before but never a CT. All in all pretty painless. The most interesting part was the contrast they stuck in via IV. It makes you feel warm. Then the nurse said, "It's going to feel like you're going pee, but trust me you're not." It did feel like I was going pee...really weird. After the CT we headed back home.

Friday morning we had an appointment with the GI doc again to find out what was going on. According to the pathologist the biopsy showed that I had a moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma. The radiologist found potentially 3 enlarged lymph nodes in the CT.

It is a tumor. Damn.