I KNEW It Was CANCER! - Andrea | Colorectal Cancer | The Patient Story

my name is Andrea I am in Spokane Washington and I was 32 years old when I was diagnosed with stage three rectal cancer I am a nurse practitioner I was a nurse ER nurse for a long time I'm going on about 10 years and then I went to nurse practitioner school and now I'm a nurse practitioner in the emergency department I'm married I have two beautiful kids my first symptoms was when I was so I was pregnant when my symptoms started with my son um I want to say it was like in June of 2021 and I just started having some like blood in my stool which pregnancy they're just like that's normal you can have hemorrhoids it's it's completely normal for that to happen I started to have a lot of really low back pain um and kind of just like some like pressure like always feeling like I had to go to the bathroom but um again they were like well your baby's sitting really low he's sitting posterior it's just pregnancy stuff I had my son um August 9th and I remember and this is like a lot of TMI but I remember when I was in labor um I was having so much rectal pain like just like it severe like contractions were nothing and I just remember telling my husband like oh my gosh like this hurts so bad I feel like that there's no there's no way this is just a hemorrhoid like this is so painful and you know the the kind of months after that were a little bit blurry I really started to see more symptoms kind of in October november-ish I was having just really like every single bowel movement was bloody and sometimes it would just be straight blood there was just it was just constant and I was probably having like 15 to 20 Bell movements a day that were just blood um and I remember being like okay this like this is not normal something is not right here and I I went to my be at my six week check and I was like Hey I want to referral to a GI doc like this isn't right and she was like okay so she referred me to a GI do and um Spokane and they got me in relatively quickly um but was pretty disappointed at the appointment I got really dismissed a lot of my stuff was dismissed for pregnancy um I Heard the words you're way too young um you just had a baby you have a bunch of hormones going through you you had known hemorrhoids like basically Al just dismissing my concerns um and I got told you know well we'll do a colonoscopy because that's the whole reason you're here right but we w we don't know when we'll be able to fit you in kind of thing so it was just more I left feeling like wow am I stupid for even thinking like this is a thing um and so I came home and I told my husband he's like well that's pretty disappointing but I was like well okay well we have the colonoscopy schedule and I think it was scheduled for like the very end of December or beginning of January at this point in December I will always remember this I was at my cousin's basketball game and I had a really like sudden onset of like a really severe like stomach cramp and I went to the bathroom and it was just like blood clots like just it was the worst one I've had it was just bright red blood with dark red clots and I was like okay like we've got to get this taken care of and my husband is a nurse anesthetist and works at one of the local hospitals and he actually contacted one of the GI docs that he works with and was like listen no one's taking my wife seriously this is what's going on can we please get her in and he was like bring her in next week I'll scope her right away and so December 21st is when I got my my colonoscopy and it's when I got my diagnosis and you know going into the colonoscopy I knew like I'm a nurse practitioner my husband's a nurse anesthetist like we knew deep down I remember my colonoscopy was on a Monday and I remember Saturday I told my husband I was like hey we just need to prepare like this is cancer I know this is cancer but still a part of you wants to think like no I'm just thinking the worst because I'm in healthcare I'm just thinking the worst but I we kept saying like and you know my husband was being so supportive and he was just like no like you can't think like that you know there's something else it's it's not cancer like and so when I went in for the colonoscopy I actually wasn't terrified at all had no anxiety going into it which is bizarre it was right when I woke up from anesthesia um the doctor he came over to me and he just put his hand on my leg and he's like there's a really big Mass there I'm so sorry and I think in that moment I was like it was like a how is this my life like this is there's no way this is my real life um you never think it will happen to you ever like and the first thought that's going through my head is okay so there's a mass is it everywhere I have two kids I how is this even possible right now I was in the middle of going through nurse practition iner school I was like why why even finish school I don't want to go to school I want to spend all my time with my children because if I don't have very much time left and you it really puts a lot of things into perspective of like I could be like I could die within the next month and you never like I know people say like oh well like we never know what tomorrow looks like but when you're handed that diagnosis and you truly have to face like wow there is a very high chance that I could be gone within the next month it is the most terrifying sickening feeling I can even describe like I I can't even describe the feeling I went through at that moment the doctor came over and said we're getting this we're getting this looked at today he's like I've already scheduled you for an MRI I'm getting you a CT scan today I've already talked to an oncologist I've already talked to um a surgeon I've already talked to a radiation oncologist like he's like I'm not letting you leave until we have a plan for you today so it was about 7 cm like up into the sigmoid colon so it's technically considered rectal cancer the MRI did show the tumor and it showed some lymph nodes but it didn't show any masses anywhere else so I had that relief of like okay so far it hasn't spread that I know of um I went home and the F like all I wanted to do was be around my kids but at the same time I didn't want them to see me with how upset I was so it was like I came home I tried to be nor noral so I got diagnosed like 4 days before Christmas so it was kind of like a we a whirlwind of let's get your appointments going so I actually got called by the radiation oncologist the very next day and they were like hey we want to get you in today um and that was we're going to map everything out for your radiation and then I got called from the oncology office and they were like hey we want to see you today to go over what your your plan's going to look like um and so I ended up going to the oncologist that next day and um he mapped everything out for me he's like basically for so the treatment guidelines for colon cancer versus rectal cancer are a little bit different which I never really got and he explained it to me but I still was like okay just do what you need to do um but he said you know we're going to start with radiation where you're going to go under 28 treatments of radiation and while you're going radiation you're going to have a chemo pump so you're going to have continuous chemotherapy infusing and then once you complete those treatments then you take like a I think like a week break from the chemo and then you do eight intensive treatments of chemotherapy where you come in and get the 4our infusions um and then after that then you have surgery um and he did say you know after your chemo we rescan you we kind of remap and see like what your tumors doing and there is a possibility that like if your tumor's gone you don't have to have surgery it's called the watch and wait where we just see if the tumor is dead or if it comes back I'm like absolutely not you're taking that thing out like I we're not watching and waiting for anything he said you know if it was an isolated tumor we would take it out but because mine was and he said it was like the level of how much it had eroded into the colon mine was very eroded in like if I would have waited a couple more months I probably would out a perforated colon like that's how bad it was um and because I had lymph involvement he's like what we need to do is we need to get the chemo in there kill what we can the radiation was to kill the tumor and the chemo was to kind of like stop the tumor cells that were floating around from like duplicating and things like that so the side effects of the radiation I I didn't have too many I had a lot of back pain um which they said would happen so a lot of back pain just achiness like in my pelvis um and you know they the thing they told me before is that they said you know we're radiating your uterus your ovaries like you're not going to be able to have any more children so are you wanting they did give me a chance they said we can do what's called an ovarian transposition where they pull the ovaries out of like the radiation field to try and Salvage if you want to have kids and I was like listen I have two healthy babies like I need to be there for them I can't delay this any longer so you know we kind of had give at that point knew that this our family was going to be complete um but I had a lot of back pain um fatigue from the radiation was insane like more more fatigue than I had when I so when I was pregnant with my son when I was 12 weeks pregnant I got covid and so I and the fatigue from the radiation was like 20 times more than that like it was the most insane fatigue I've ever experienced in my life um which is weird because it was just this isolated like beam shooting your tumor but um and then the the initial chemo pump I didn't have any side effects other than my fingertips turned like different colors which was weird so I always explained it like it looked like I dipped my fingertips in self-tanner you know my oncologist was like you can't work you can't you need to just rest and I'm like I'm not just going to sit at home and sulk so I actually completed my last semester of nurse practitioner School while I was in chemo um and I used my chemo treatments as my study time away from my kids so um keeping myself busy and just continuing to push through like really helped me but I you know I had days like there there were absolutely times where it would hit me like holy crap I cannot believe this is what I'm going through and I would have to go upstairs I'd lock myself in my room so my kids didn't see me and I would completely break down and just have a moment of just like hysterically crying like ugly crying of why why is this happening to me like what did I do um to have to go through this and then I'd pop right out of it you know one of my good friends she's always like okay have your moment in pity City and then get yourself out of it and let's go so I'd always just tell myself that like get out of pity City we had our moment time to get back so after treatment was a little bit of a whirlwind I was just starting my first job as a nurse practitioner um right after I completed treatment right before I had my first surgery um they wanted to rescan me and see just how much the tumor had like shrink um so I ended up having another CT and an MRI and I remember being at my very first day of work at my new job I was training and I got the my chart result like okay your CT scans back and I'm like okay I'm going to look at at it so I opened it up and the first thing I saw was new lesion on the liver and my heart dropped and I'm like I went through all of this only for it to not work and now I'm stage four and I remember just like the feeling of like okay I'm at my first job I need to like get through this day but at the same time like how is this possible that day like that day gives me more anxiety and just makes me like cringe more than the day I got diagnosed um because it felt like I had gone through so much for it just to not work um and the next day I remember messaging my oncology team and I was like can I please can I have a phone call with my oncologist so we can talk about my CT scan and she goes yeah he'll like do a a telephone call with you or tell Zoom video I like okay so I went out to my car I was again at work um I went out to my car and got on the call and he had my CT scan pulled up and he was there and my oncologist he's so great he's so wonderful but um when he presents things sometimes he doesn't have like you know the most like upbeat tone so I never know what to expect and so I was sitting there and I was just waiting for him to tell me and he goes you know the spot on your liver he's like I am 99% sure is not cancer and I was like what but he said it in such a calm tone and I was like really and he's like you know he's like I actually have a call out to the liver specialist to just look at it he's like but I really don't think it is um he said you know the chemo you have can really damage your liver so at that moment I was like oh my gosh like and I was like so okay so it's not spread he's like no he said you know your tumor has actually shrunk significantly he's like it's still there he's like we still need to do the surgery but he's like yeah this spot on your liver I'm just really not concerned about um but he said but what's going to happen is the surgeon she's actually going to step in on your surgery so my surgery was scheduled for like three days after this and he's like she's actually going to go in and look at your liver herself and make sure there is nothing there and I'm like okay so I felt a little bit better about that um so then three days later I had have the surgery which is a pretty major surgery um it was quite I can't remember how long I think I was under but um they basically go in and they resect the entire tumor plus a bunch of like size on one side of the tumor and the other side to make sure that it gets all taken out um and then at that point the surgeon went in and looked at my liver too um to make sure that I didn't have any like spot on my liver at all um and then what they did was they did what a temporary ostomy so where they basically take my colon and bring it out through my stomach to let like my surgery sight heal um and I had to have that for like 10 weeks 8 to 10 weeks um I had to be in the hospital for a couple days which sucked um just to make sure that everything was working um and that was the first surgery and then I had that osy for about 8 to 10 weeks and then I had to go in and have it reversed so they go in and they just basically put my colon back together without that tumor in it and that surgery was actually a little bit more intense it was much more painful um even though it was a shorter surgery when I got told about the ostomy you know my initial thoughts were like I don't care do what you I just was in that mindset do what you need to do to get me better I don't care um but when I actually came home with the ilos I it was a very big mental block for me um I felt like I didn't want to go out in public I didn't want I just was like disgusted and I you know being a nurse for so many years and seeing people with these like I I never minded taking care of them on other people but I I've never thought that I would have to have one and I remember the first day that the home health nurse came over to like help me figure out how to change the bag and stuff I couldn't do it my husband had to do it CU I was so emotionally distraught from it um um and my husband actually just said you don't ever have to look at this I will take care of it for as long as like you have it when I Got It reversed I just remember the doctor being like okay like yes it's getting reversed but I'm just telling you right now it's not going to be a walk in the park like you we have removed a lot of your nerve endings like your colon has basically been asleep for the past how many you know weeks like this could be basically you might have to potty train yourself again and I was like maybe I Don't Want It reversed like maybe I just want to like just keep it there were so many times I wanted to give up I was like I remember telling my doctor I was like just give me the ilos back I want it back like I don't care and she was like you Wen you say that now you're not going to say that in a month I'm telling you you're not going to say that in a month um I think that just again having my moments of like this sucks I hate this but then also like look how far I've come so technically I was remission on the day of my surgery the day of my second no my first surgery when they pulled the whole tumor out um so June of 2022 um and I guess at that point I didn't necessarily think I was in remission because I was like well they still need to scan to make sure they got everything they took the tumor out and they take the mark test the margins to make sure there was no tumor cells and I had negative margins which they said is really good but unfortunately I had had like eight lymph nodes that had live cells in it and that puts you at such a high risk for recurrence so because of that they were like we're going to have you on a really close scan blood work every three months for like five years um so it wasn't until probably my three month scan after that where they didn't see anything that I was like okay I'm I've really am officially like I don't have the cancer in me anymore um but I don't think I've ever to this day I still don't think I've ever gotten to the point where I don't feel that I have cancer it's just I think a part of me knows that someday it probably will come back um and I don't know how to get out of the mindset that it won't like even though you know my blood work I get you know I get a CT skin and MRI every three months and then I get a tumor DNA test where they actually extracted DNA from my tumor and then they draw my blood every three months and they compare those so they can actually pick up if there's like tumor cells loing every single one's been negative since June of 2022 um but I can't get in the mindset that it's gone for self- advocating like you can ask any of my friends I am a huge advocate now for like self- advocating I've had people reach out to me you know on Facebook on Instagram who've seen my story and they're like hey I started to have these symptoms I went to my doctor and my doctor was like oh you know we'll just follow up and in a couple months I've been like absolutely not you find yourself a new doctor you go to an urgent care you go to an ER and you say this is what I need this is what I want um you know you have to push for it like and you know I have told people I'm like exaggerate your symptoms a little bit like if you had one bloody bow movement okay maybe it is nothing but you go and you say I'm having multiple bloody bow movements so you get that colonoscopy because right now the colonoscopy age is 45 which is so crazy to me with the rates of colon cancer showing up in people's 18 to 35 and yet the colonoscopy age in the United States is 45 so I am just one that's absolutely like Advocate exaggerate your symptoms to get what you want you know I've seen patients working as an I'm a fairly new nurse practitioner to the ER I've been in ER medicine for 10 years now but I'm a new provider and I've had at like already I've actually had a couple young patients come in who have had similar symptoms and they're like yeah just like my primary doesn't take me seriously and I'm like okay well we're going to call GI here in the ER today we are going to try and get this figured out because you you know you would think that with the number of cases that it would be like okay we need to lower the the age but I also understand that GI is like with the amount the increased amount of cancer cases and people needing Scopes they're overwhelmed too there isn't enough enough providers to provide all of this care now with this like uptick advice that I'd have for anyone in this situation is that you know I hate I I hate it when people say this to me but there is a reason for everything there is a reason that we were chose to go through this fight um you know I look at it as like I was chosen to go through this fight so I could help bring awareness to other people like I we were chosen for a reason and we need to be strong through this fight we need to be there for our friends like we need to be the ones that show that we can't get through this um and there are going to be dark days there are going to be days where you feel like you cannot go on any longer um you know I had plenty of those days where I felt like I cannot I don't want to wake up tomorrow I cannot move on from this um but just know that we can there is a light at the end of the tunnel like there is a bright side even though you don't feel like there is um and know that your feelings are validated like you know I had I had people be like well like look at you're still here like you're doing great but it's like no you don't know you have no idea how this how this is feeling and we are the only ones that will know truly how this feels um so just know your feelings are validated but know that you can get through this um and I'm one to say like I'm always here to talk to anybody who's going through that because I think us who have been diagnosed really only know how that feeling is

Channel: The Patient Story

Views: 151,178

Keywords: cancer, patients, cancer stories, cancer survivors, cancer treatment, chemotherapy, treatment tips, radiation therapy, cancer patients, caregivers, the patient story, how to deal with diagnosis, cancer and emotions, oncologists, patient care, patient experience, colorectal cancer, colorectal cancer symptoms, rectal cancer, radiation side effects, chemotherapy side effects, blood in stool, colon cancer warning signs, back pain, sigmoid colon, stage 3 colorectal cancer

Id: ui-9MR8Wrr4

Length: 22min 41sec (1361 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024