Pain in Nick's A**: 363

363 days ago my surgeon removed nearly 12 inches of colon along with the pain in my a**. With that said metaphorically it will continue to be a pain in my a**, probably forever. While, I feel great and my colon is working well, I still have some neuropathy in my hands and feet and follow-up appointments every three months. There’s always some anxiety from the follow-ups, more so with the CT scan and Colonoscopies, than the blood work, but anxiety nonetheless.  So, while my physical cancer may be gone, the mental cancer will continue. But that’s OK.

There is a bright side to the neuropathy at least. You’re all probably wondering where I’m going with this. While it does remind me of cancer, which constantly puts that in my head, it reminds me of cancer. Why is that good? Well it’s a reminder every day that I should live a healthy life. Go to the gym. Take my vitamins. Eat my veggies. I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten into bed, felt the numbness in my feet as they slid along the sheets, and remembered to take my vitamins and baby aspirin. How’s that for glass half full?

I checked in with the surgeon and my oncologist today. Everything is fine, so both appointments were pretty uneventful. They took some blood, poked at me a bit, and that’s about it. Hopefully it’s the last time I see the surgeon. Not that he wasn’t a nice guy, but if I see him again it means things aren’t good. I will continue to be followed by my oncologist every three months or so for the near future. We pushed off my next CT scan until next October. Everything has been stable and I’ve received a ton of radiation at this point, so we thought it was best to start reducing my radiation exposure. I’ll have another colonoscopy in July to go in and check for local recurrences. Local recurrences in rectal cancer treated with radiation are less than 10% so that’s not a bad number. So no more poking and prodding for another three months (let me find some wood to knock on). Sweet!

In December I decided that I should give back, so I contacted the Colon Cancer Alliance (http://ccalliance.org/) to see what I could do to help. The have a buddy program that pairs up the newly diagnosed with those who’ve gone through the whole thing. I know how helpful the stories I read during my treatment were for me, so I’d like to help others with that as well. Also just like most other things, ‘good news’ tends to be ‘no news’ with cancer as well. The problem is, is that if all the stories out there are the ‘bad news’ stories, then that’s all people see. For newly diagnosed patients I think it’s important to get both sides out there, otherwise it’s quite demoralizing only seeing the ‘bad news’. Last week I also volunteered to work at the American Society of Clinical Oncologists GI Symposium in San Francisco. I talked with various docs and other healthcare professionals about the resources that the CCA has for patients and their caregivers.

Me with Martha Raymond from the CCA

Another group that was helpful during my treatment was the Colon Club (http://www.colonclub.com/). They have a fabulous message board where patients and caregivers get together for support and information. The Colon Club has a mission statement of using out-of-the-box ways to increase the awareness of colorectal cancer. One of the ways they do that is with the Colondar (http://www.colonclub.com/about-the-colondar/). The Colondar is a yearly calendar featuring colorectal cancer surviviors younger than 50, to bring awareness that this disease can happen to anyone. So I’ve decide to put my hat in the ring for the 2015 Colondar. Wish me luck.