My First Time

You always remember your first time. It's awkward, but in the end it's wonderful.

My first time was in January, 2005. His name was Russel and he was much older than me, which I found comforting. I prefer doctors who are older than me, especially now that I'm older than a lot of the doctors I see. Not that I'm old. I'm 44 now, and was only 38 when Dr. Kramer delivered the news. Marcie, a long-time patient of Dr. Kramer's, was with me in his office when he told us. "We found two polyps and removed them. One was rather large. The pathology report came back that you've got cancer." Boom, there it is. Room now spins in stop motion, Matrix-style.

"I think we got it very early, and I'm 95% sure that removing the polyp was all we had to do, but you're 38 years old and you have 3 kids. 95% isn't good enough." So we talked about surgery and whether I'd need any chemo or radiation and all the other questions you write down the night before when you've been summoned to the doctor's office to discuss colonoscopy results. I pretty much did a copy and paste from WebMD. 

He reminds me that it was Marcie who nagged me to come in to see him. I'd run the Chicago Marathon in October of '04 and during my training I'd noticed that in my post-long-run potty trips, there was blood when I wiped. (If you're grossed out or offended by that, don't bother reading this blog.) I assumed hemorrhoids (thank you spell-check) or something like that, but when the bleeding continued even after I wasn't doing long runs anymore, Marcie got concerned. "She just saved your life," Kramer said. "I don't know how it works in your house, but in my house that'd be worth a BIG diamond." Thanks Doc.

We celebrated Valentine's Day 2005 with a laproscopic anterior resection of the colon. Within 6 weeks I was back to running, and other than the fun of an annual colonoscopy, it was 5 1/2 years of cancer-free bliss. It was my first time, and in the end, it was wonderful.