THE C WORD

Steve, theGoodWordGuy again. Buckle in, we are starting to get a little more intense.

I WAS FEELING POORLY

IN EARLY OCTOBER OF 1999, I was feeling poorly beyond the normal rundown character of a restaurant owner. I had bombarded my system for many years with alcohol and tobacco abuse, high fat, late night dinners, poor exercise and sleep habits and a general self-destructive lifestyle. I consulted my doctor and he started the normal battery of tests; blood work, stress tests and EKG, all to no avail. In November, I had begun to feel much worse.

My stomach was very upset and painful. I had tremendous pain on my right side so bad I could barely function. I could not sit, stand or sleep. My doctor ordered tests to be run on my liver and gall bladder. The results were all negative. My stomach was then checked for ulcers and acid reflux. The pain in my lower abdomen grew worse each day. Even though all these tests were negative, my body kept telling me something grave was wrong. Before Christmas, I had an upper GI, which showed no irregularities.

Great frustration was setting in because I was told there was nothing wrong with me. After receiving the negative results from my upper GI, I decided to have a lower GI double barium test done. Take my word for it, avoid this test at all costs, it surely lives up to its reputation. My pain and overall discomfort grew worse over the holidays. I could not sleep at night or sit because of the excruciating pain. Finally, I received the results from the lower GI. The doctor had identified what he believed to be a fatty tissue mass on the inside of the lower colon wall.

MY PERSISTANCE HAD PAID OFF.

My persistence had paid off. The perplexing issue was that the tissue mass was in my lower sigmoid (lower colon) on my left side. But all the pain and discomfort I had felt was in my right abdomen cavity. Even though this was perplexing, I thought I was making progress with the diagnosis. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, one major symptom I had this entire time was that I was passing blood. At first, my hemorrhoids got the blame. Every time I went to the bathroom, I would pass blood. Now I knew this wasn’t normal, but I guess I dealt with it as an ongoing symptom like my abdominal pain.

During the first week of January 2000, blood was pouring out of me. I became very disturbed. Now I knew I had a very serious health problem. We returned to my doctor the second week of January and told him of my serious bleeding. I requested any other tests that might be available to check these symptoms. We were asked if I wanted to have a colonoscopy.

This is a very simple procedure used to view the inside of the colon walls, take biopsies and perform light surgery. My colonoscopy was scheduled for Friday, January 21, 2000. During the procedure, the colon walls were observed for polyps and a biopsy was performed on the fatty tissue mass.

I was scheduled for a follow up appointment with the doctor who performed the colonoscopy. I didn’t think much of the appointment. Actually, I was scheduled to work in my restaurant after the appointment. I had been told that fatty masses were commonplace and relatively harmless. I thought this doctor’s visit would be like all the other ones, with no positive results. I was called into the small office, asked to sit down and I was told I had stage two colon cancer.

MY LIFE STOPPED. I WILL NEVER FORGET THAT HORRID DAY, THE DAY I HEARD MY DOCTOR TELL ME, “YOU HAVE CANCER.”

This doctor was also a surgeon. He had already contacted the hospital and prepped the admissions staff. Immediately after I received the news of my life, we were instructed to immediately go to the hospital for pre surgery tests. When we arrived at the hospital, we met with the anesthesiologist, admissions, answered a thousand questions and went through another battery of tests. My surgery was scheduled for the following Tuesday, February 1st at 8:00 AM.

I started to experience symptoms of shock. The world I was living in at the time was moving around me, but I was not part of it. I was in a trance like state. (Much worse than the one I usually live in.) I kept saying to myself over and over again, “this cannot be happening to me.” But it was. I had cancer and for the first time in my life I felt vulnerable to fear and death. I felt tremendous anger towards my Creator. I felt hatred towards the world and everything in it.

FEAR RAN RAMPANT IN MY HEART, A NEW UNRECOGNIZED FEAR THAT CANCER PATIENTS COME TO KNOW AND NEVER LOSE.

I went home to face the worst moments of my life. I had to tell my six children, parents, relatives and friends that I had cancer and was having surgery. Even today, I find it hard to describe that night. We called a family meeting and told our children the news. I felt so many emotions; fear, shame, failure, anxiety, unrest, doubt, deep depression… I was living in a nightmare, one that all cancer patients face. We seem endlessly bound together by it.

The sleepless nights, the fear every pain in our body brings, the anxiety of every blood test, the permanent unrest that creates a pillar of our personality. The battle to defeat cancer is an emotional and psychological one. Yes, surgery and chemotherapy are all a part of the plan, but the battle is won in the mind.

EVERTHING ABOUT CANCER IS HORRIBLE.

The prep for surgery was no different. The morning after I was told I had cancer, a nurse came to our house to start an IV line, which I had till my surgery The IV bag was enclosed in a backpack that I carried with me. The backpack concealed and protected the IV pack. The IV solution contained medicine to keep me from becoming ill before surgery. I also had to take over seventy pills to sterilize my body organs. This was a brutal undertaking. I think medicine has come a long way since those prehistoric times.

The medicine hurt my stomach and made me bleed even more than I had been. This procedure was intolerable, but I had to clean out my system to prevent any infection during surgery. For the next four days before my surgery, I did not sleep. I cried. I had so many emotions stirring in my mind.

Fear and anger were center stage. Sunday morning our family went to church together. I looked at all our friends. They looked back at me, not knowing what to say. I looked around at our beautiful church, not knowing if I would ever be back. I cried throughout the entire mass. It was such a shame to be in a church service and be so sad.

My wife had called our priest Saturday night and he agreed to meet with us after mass. He waited for us on the altar after the service was over. He asked us what he could do. I told him I wanted to be blessed with the holy oils of the church. I asked him to pray for a mental, physical and spiritual healing for me. After his prayers and blessings, we went home.

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE MY SURGERY

On the night before my surgery, I said goodnight to my children, my parents, my two sisters, my mother-in-law and my wife. I spent many hours saying goodnight to myself as well. I was numb with anxiety and fear. I had never experienced any emotions like this. I had lost my ability to cope with this situation and was too angry to put it in God’s hands. To top it all off, I had to swallow 24 pills that night to prevent infection. The side effect of the medication was six hours of terrible diarrhea and horrid stomach pain.

The next morning, at 6:00 AM, we went to the hospital. I don’t remember much about the drive that black morning, but I do remember being afraid of the unknown, of unexpected complications, that they’d open me up and discover that the cancer had spread. What then? I still didn’t know much about colon cancer. It was like I was in a trance. I realize today that I was protecting myself with a sort of cushion. A cushion that didn’t prevent me from having to walk into that dark, dreary hospital.

As gallant as I tried to be when we pulled up to the hospital doors, I started crying as soon as my wife went to park the van. This couldn’t possibly be happening to me! I was a good man, I thought. So why was I being punished? While we waited for my name to be called to go to pre-op, I remember wondering why there was no coffee for my wife to drink.

FINALLY, THE SECOND WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE HAPPENED.

The OR nurse came out and called my name. I looked deep into my wife’s eyes, squeezed her hand and slowly walked towards the dressing room. I felt like a convict taking that final walk to the gas chamber, or a gladiator getting ready for the arena. Once dressed in my hospital garments a nurse helped me into a bed, covered me with a warm blanket and started an IV. She asked me my name and compared it to the bracelet on my arm. Unfortunately, it was me. By this time, the anxiety and fear was making me nauseous. I told one of the nurses and she gave me a shot of Demerol to calm me down.

My wife came in and we quietly talked for a few minutes. Then she went out to the waiting room when they came for me. To this day, I don’t know what she was thinking at that time. She still refuses to discuss it with me. The operating room was cold and sterile as most operating rooms are. The anesthesiologist was a friend of our family and she tried to comfort me as best she could; she tried, God bless her.

The surgery had taken four and a-half hours, two and a half hours longer than what was projected. The cancerous tumor had grown close to several arteries and was intertwined with them. This required that one third of my colon be removed. The surgeon had to take unexpected steps during surgery to protect the arteries. The tumor that was removed was the size of a grapefruit. The doctor had also removed 38 lymph nodes that were near the cancer. These were tested to see if the cancer had spread to my lymph system.

THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER

The next thing I remember was trying to move my eyes in the recovery room, flex my muscles in my stomach and feel my feet. I could do nothing. I was totally freaked out for a second. A recovery nurse saw me struggling. She explained that my body had shut down several of its systems during the surgery and it would take time to start them back up again. She neglected to mention that she meant days even weeks. She explained what all the tubes were that were going in and out of my body. There was an IV in my right finger, a temperature clip on my left, an epidural coming out of my spine, a catheter and an oxygen tube wrapped around my ears and stuck in my nose.

My stomach was stapled and wrapped. I felt pain and a new fear , a new experience for someone who used to be so fearless. When I was finally moved to my hospital room, I found it decorated with flowers, cards, prayer cards and visitors. As a matter of fact, I had so many visitors on my first day out of surgery, I had to close the door because I was so exhausted. The hospital stay was very traumatic and painful for me. As I am reading this years later, I can barely hold back my emotions.

Shortly after arriving in my room, the surgeon came in and talked to my wife and I about the operation. He told us that it had gone well, but there was a three-day wait to get back the results of the routine biopsy of the colon walls and the 38 lymph nodes. I became very upset. It never occurred to me that the cancer might have spread to other organs. Once again, I could not escape the fear and panic I felt.

A HOSPITAL IS NO PLACE TO REST.

The first night after surgery several nurses came in at 2:00 AM, woke me up and told me I was going to sit on the edge of my bed. That seemed quite impossible considering my 14” incision closed with staples and surgery just 12 hours before. I still don’t know why this was done. As the nurses lifted and pulled me, my IV came out, my epidural came loose and my oxygen tube was pulled off my face. The nurses literally pushed and pulled me till I was up in the bed screaming with pain. I was not a very compliant patient at that moment.

My body cavity was screaming with indescribable pain. Although my stomach was stapled and wrapped, it felt like it was being pulled apart again. When I woke up the next morning, my IV had leaked everywhere and I was dehydrated. I called the morning nurse and she came and fixed all my tubes. My waking thoughts were of the pain from my groin area, my dry mouth and my overwhelming desire to heal.

I BECAME ADAMANT ABOUT BECOMING A SURVIVOR, NEVER A VICTIM.

I am a true believer in the power of the mind. Many years prior, my father taught me positive visualization as a part of my successful sports career. Remember my father? He was my high school math teacher, my football coach and truly my hero. I credit my father with teaching me how to unleash the great power of the subconscious mind to overcome any obstacle I faced in life. He was such a quiet man, strong willed, focused and honest.

He also taught me how to visualize doing something in my mind, going through the event step by step, start to finish. He taught me that the most important step of visualization is seeing the victorious outcome. Using this style of thinking kept my thought processes on the finish. This kept me from stumbling over the trials of life that trip us up and try to make us fall.
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I learned during high school football to use this thought process. The night before a game, I would intensely focus and review every play we could possibly run. I would envision running the ball, blocking, catching a pass, returning a punt or intercepting a pass. I even slept with a football in my hands. During track season, I visualized races during the rigorous training sessions we had. I would think of my start out of the starting blocks, relaxing my body as I ran and crossing the finish line victorious. Track being an individual sport was very well suited for the natural expression of positive imaging.

I BELIEVE…

I believe this mental thought process is one of the laws of the natural world, like gravity. But like gravity, we misunderstand its purpose and use. Just as we cannot change the natural law of gravity we cannot change the fact that our thoughts control and influence our physical, emotional and spiritual welfare. A great thinker said this many years ago. His statement was, “As you think, so it shall be.” That man, Jesus the Christ, forever changed the world.

I never spoke much of my mental exercises in the mid-1970’s. Most people wouldn’t have understood. Today, visualization is taught in sports at all levels. It is standard procedure for all successful college, professional and Olympic athletes. So I used visualization to achieve victorious outcome. This was what I did after my surgery.

I asked that nurse every question about my body that I could think of, how my body’s systems needed to be turned back on, how the healing process worked for my incision and colon and the overall healing process and how I could improve it. My intent was to enable myself to visualize my body healing and help the healing process. That was good plan.