Had the surgery 2/19 to remove the entire sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes.

Was in recovery 2/19 to 2/23 and released to go home!

The biopsy results came in late today and confirmed 0/12 lymph nodes were malignant. That’s it! It’s clean! No stage 3, no chemo required!

Follow up with the surgeon on 4/1 to talk about where we go from here, my guess is colonoscopies 2x a year for life now since it went from 0 to stage 2 in 6 months.

March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, wear blue and get checked!

#✅UR:

Not sure when I’ll be back modding, I still feel like someone slammed me in the gut with a baseball bat. Cricket bat for our international folks! Maybe another 2-3 weeks.

I still lurk and comment occasionally, just as my health allows!

Edit Bonus - Since my wife had her own medical event this year involving a massive infection, spinal intrusion and below knee amputation, we already hit the out of pocket maximum on our insurance for the year.

Sooo…

Get insurance guys, no, seriously, get insurance.

  • pleksi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    10·
    1 day ago

    Congrats! Sounds like an excellent prognonsis!

    Also, Jesus fucking christ a 100000 dollars for a workup+surgery? A similar case is propably no more than 10-15k€ in northern europe (paid by the taxpayer of course).

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      61·
      1 day ago

      You can see, the doc himself was like $7,800, the bulk of it being “hospital fees”. It will be interesting to see the breakdown on the UB-04 as to what those actual fees were. Probably tens of thousands for all the lab work every 3 hours and the heparin drip I was on.

      • pleksi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        4·
        24 hours ago

        Yea in get that, i was talking in terms of total costs.

        E: actually looked it up, most likely the whole thing wouldve been max 10000euros to the taxpayer around here (Finland). Workup+surgery+hospital stay.

  • Axolotl@feddit.itEnglish
    391·
    1 day ago

    Congrats! So glad that it was found early;

    it’s crazy that you have to pay for these life-saver visits and operations btw…w

  • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    21 hours ago

    Glad to hear you’re cancer free! My father in law just had colon cancer removed a few days ago and we’re awaiting the biopsy results. Seriously: get checked, people!

  • CanadaPlusEnglish
    4·
    23 hours ago

    Nice!

    Obviously you don’t have to answer since it’s personal, but I am curious: How does that effect your digestion? I always kinda wonder how much intestine you really need, because apparently it’s not all of it.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      51·
      21 hours ago

      The colon is all about pulling water out of your stool to make poop, well… poop!

      The sigmoid colon is the last line of that process. So without it, poop will still be poop, but maybe not necessarily as firm as it would be with it.

      In my case, that works to my advantage, because I take statin drugs and statin drugs make me miserable. Having slightly looser stool might actually make me normal for a change!

  • fartographer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    20 hours ago

    YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! I’m so happy for you! This was the post I’ve been hoping to see!

  • Bone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    1 day ago

    Wonderful news! Sorry to hear about your wife’s issues though. It sounds like you guys have been through it! Hope it’s calmer for you both now. Speedy recovery.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    24 hours ago

    Congratulations. It went by so fast. For some reason I thought you were european. Due to my wifes medical issues a long time back paying max out of pocket every year became the new normal.