the whole story

Some of you have asked how I knew to get a colonoscopy at such a young age, I thought I'd put the whole story as a post so those of you that hadn't heard it could read about it.

When I was pregnant with my second child, about 6 months along I started having rectal bleeding.  At this point I brought it to my Gynecologists attention and he told me that in any other circumstances they might think that something serious was wrong but since I was pregnant and  had never had problems before, we would treat me for hemorrhoids.  I did his recommendations with no changes.  At this point the bleeding was the only symptom.  This continued through out the rest of the pregnancy and when I had my post pregnancy apt when Drew was about 6 months old I brought it up again to the OB.  He then decided I should see a GI Dr just in case and gave me a referral. I then went to see the GI and immediately he wanted to do a colonoscopy. Since at this point, March of this year I still had no other symptoms I was reluctant to do so.  I wanted to see if there was any way to remove the hemorrhoid that I thought was causing the problem.  I did his recommendations to ease the bleeding of what we thought were hemorrhoids and this did nothing. 
   One reason I was reluctant to get a colonoscopy was because my son did not take a bottle or drink from a cup at this point and to get the colonoscopy I would have to pump and dump and I was concerned he wouldn't get any milk from me for a day or so.  After March I experienced change in bowel habits, mostly just frequency increased and lots of cramping.  This continued off and on and eventually just got worse and worse.  At the beginning of August the cramping was so bad and so similar to period like cramps that I saw my OB again.  I hadn't had my period since I had Drew and wondered if the 2 were related.  He did an ultrasound and full exam of bladder, ovaries and found nothing wrong.   A week later in August i had an annual physical with my primary dr where I brought this up.  They suggested I get the colonoscopy and actually got me in the next week for an apt with the GI.  A few days later I had the thought of it possibly being my gallbladder that was causing problems because of more intense pains I had that day after eating a semi greasy meal.  I contacted my primary Dr the next day and had ultra sounds done for gallbladder and that showed nothing wrong.
  I went to my apt the next week with the GI and scheduled my colonoscopy for a few days later.  After the procedure the GI dr met with me and Bryan and told me that he wasn't able to complete the colonoscopy because when he started to put the scope in, right at my sigmoid colon, he ran into a huge tumor which he biopsied.   He told us that he didn't even need to wait for the results of the biopsy to know it was cancerous, he could tell by looking at it.  He then referred us to a specialist, a colorectal surgeon that we could meet with and before we left his office we had an apt for the following day.  The results from the biopsy came back a few days later and it indeed was adeno carcinoma cancer.  Which is good because it is a typical colon cancer vs something else.
   I had CT scans done to make sure there were no more tumors outside of the colon, which there weren't .  Next the surgeon suggested that I have a stent put in later in the week to relieve pressure from the tumor and open up the colon to allow for him to do a full colonoscopy a week later so that before the surgery he would know if there were any other polyps or tumors to remove other than the one they had already found.  The stent was put in on a Friday and just about 24 hrs later came out on its own on Saturday.  I was glad it was out because it only caused serious discomfort and diarrhea since the minute it was put in.  The Surgeon then decided instead of doing a regular colonoscopy to see what else needed to be removed he would do a CT colonograph.  This was extremely painful as they pump you full of air and you can't move while they do the scan.  This test had good results as they saw nothing else in my colon that needed to be removed.
  When the surgery was performed they removed 18" of my colon and were able to reconnect it and didn't even need to give me any kind of external collection bag while my colon healed.  I was eating normal food a few days after the surgery and everything was working!!  and that's the full story!