The first post, and not so awesome news.

Last year my aunt died of cancer.  It started off as fairly advanced bowel cancer and over a couple of years worsened and spread.  Parts of the cancer were tested, and in combination with two other relatives with a history of bowel cancer it was determined that my family met the criteria for regular surveillance colonoscopies, with the aim of preventing bowel cancer. Members of my family were contacted, and have all made individual decisions as to whether or not they would like to get regular colonoscopies. 

Mine was a couple of weeks ago, and it took an unexpectedly long time.  That was because there was a lot of polyps in there and the surgeon did his best to remove all of them.  The odd polyp isn't unusual, the amount I had is.  One of the lesions was ulcerated, and in the doctor's opinion, suspicious of malignancy.  I was still fairly sedated, so it was a shock, but kind of a muffled shock.  The week that followed was pretty horrid as we contemplated the possibility of a very nasty cancer gene syndrome, the possibility that all removed polyps were cancerous and the possibility that they were high grade.

I was told last week that there was ONE LOW GRADE lesion, and that nothing tested came back positive for the nasty genetic syndrome.  While I was upset to be told that I did have cancer, it was a lot less cancer and a lot less bad than it could have been.  There were no info packs or tissues in the room, just a registrar I'd never met from a service I thought I was finished with.  Also, I actually thought that I was at the appointment for something else, so didn't have anyone with me, I'd focussed more on getting the kids sorted for the appointment time.  Moral is: support people, every visit.

We've been well treated by the hospital - I tell you what, you know it is serious when you receive phone calls about your follow up appointments (because they are the next day).   Also, people use their very serious voices when they talk to me at the moment.  I'm getting kind of sick of that! I spend a lot of the time on the phone making appointments at the moment - and then making further calls to arrange childcare/ support etc.  Everyone is working hard to ensure that they have maximum information for the colo-rectal surgeon to provide us with good advice.

I've had a CT to check for other cancer (sobering) and have an MRI scheduled for a more detailed view of my colon.

It may feel kind of stink of me to be letting you know like this.  Please understand that we have told people based on urgency of need (particularly having the children looked after during appointments) and wanted to put back telling people generally until we had much better information.  Also, unless you have done this before, sitting down and telling your friends face to face what is going on is horrid hard work.  Especially when you don't like upsetting people.

Also, we knew that there would be a difficult conversation with our oldest daughter as we try to explain some of the worst information that you can give a child.  It is important to us that we be accurate, honest and make the children feel safe and well cared for.

It is quite likely that we will be leaning heavily on our friends and family for support over the next wee while.  It has been a real nasty shock for both of us, and we have no control over things like appointment times.  We do appreciate frequent enquiries as to how we are feeling - it does help.  Black humour is fine, there hasn't been nearly enough jokes about butt cancer.  We do ask that people try to keep discussion away from children's ears - we don't want the kids having to field lots of questions from their friends.  Cancer Society and Skylight have some good resources for tricky questions.