Symptoms

Hello Everyone- I hope you all had a great weekend. I had a good but difficult weekend. I can't really talk about the difficult part because it affects others than just me. We did go to Pittsburg/Frontnac for the weekend which was fun. We stayed with Doug's Nanie and Papa and had a wedding on Saturday evening. I danced and had a great time. I did have some other things on my mind, but I still had a great time! I want to thank Brandi and Jan for your help this weekend. I appreciate you both so much!!
This week is fairly low key. I did talk to my surgeon on Friday. She wants to take me back the OR for another procedure under anesthesia, tomorrow (Monday). She is going to another exam, similar to the endoscopic ultrasound, but not the ultrasound part. She is going to take more biopsies with larger amounts of tissue. From what she saw when I had surgery in January, she is very skeptical that this recent mass is not a cancerous tumor, even though the biopsies came back negative. She also thinks that the scans and CEA marker are not truly showing what is really there, she thinks there is more cancer than what all these tests show. So tomorrow I will not eat again before the procedure, pretty much from the time I wake up. Then I have to be there at 1100, they will put me under anesthesia again and they will take the samples and then I will wake up. Hopefully not a big deal. She might know something after she does the procedure, but again I will probably have to wait for the biopsy results.
I wanted to address a question several people have emailed me lately. I have had several women ask what my initial symptoms were that led to this diagnosis. I have addressed this before, but that was much earlier on in my blog. I don't expect everyone to be able to read all that! My initial symptoms were about 6 months after I had my daughter. I had abdominal cramping (pretty severe, doubling over in pain), constipation (pellet stools or even dust, not being able to get it all out, straining, going several times to try to get it all out) and eventually I had blood in my stool. I have had several people email me that are concerned that they have these symptoms and what to do if they do. Please, go see your doctor right away, if they brush you off saying it's nothing but you don't feel like it is nothing, push them or go see a GI specialist and get a COLONOSCOPY! Truly, it isn't horrible, the worst part is the prep but it is a nice nap, you don't even know they are down there! Please don't ignore it!!! If it is caught early, it can save your life. I hope this helps all of you who do have symptoms. If you have more questions, please email me! I did find out that the girl I was recently asking for a prayer request for did find out she has cancer and I believe is undergoing surgery tomorrow to remove it. Please pray for Michele that her surgery goes without complication and that they are able to remove all of the cancer! I will be praying for you Michele! Have a great week. Good luck to all the kids going back to school and all the parents taking there kids back to school. Please keep my family in your prayers, we continue to need them! We appreciate all of your support, again I feel like Bartles and James when I say that,hehe. shawndra