December 21, 2013
I don't remember collapsing onto the floor that Saturday morning, but I do remember Karla and her parents all gathered around me as I lay on the floor in the living room, with Karla's Mom yelling to call 911. Apparently I had fainted from the pain in my stomach and had actually been out cold for a minute or two. The whole thing seemed surreal - first to arrive were the firemen and then the EMTs. I was strapped to a gurney and carried down the stairs to the ground floor, then wheeled out to a waiting ambulance. In all my life, I'd never been in an ambulance before. Crazy isn't it? 40 years of playing ice hockey, 25 years of soccer, and never once was I carted off the field or the rink with a serious injury.
The closest hospital to our home in Reading was Winchester Hospital in the next town over. It took about ten minutes to get there and I was wheeled into the Emergency department. Karla followed close behind and joined me in the admitting area. I guess it was a busy day at the hospital, because my room consisted of a gurney against the wall in the hallway just down from admitting desk. We would stay there, pretty much in that spot, for the next seven or eight hours.
The pain had eased somewhat, so I was no longer in any danger of passing out. My assumption was that I was having an apendicitis attack. It seemed to be pain in that general area, and my brother Jamie and my niece Hailey had both had their appendices removed over the years. In order to determine if that was the case, I was scheduled for a CT scan that evening. A CT scan allows doctors to get a very precise look at the internal organs in your abdominal and pelvic areas. Before getting the scan, you have to drink two bottles of oral contrast. Nasty stuff - it's essentially a dye that allows some organs to show up better on the scan. Unfortunately, you have to wait about two hours to process the stuff. I was finally wheeled in for a scan in the late evening. The scan itself was relatively quick - you basically pass through a huge tube (think of it as a miniature Stargate!) several times and then you are done. Wheeled back to my "room" against the wall in the hallway. More waiting.
I was wheeled into a private room finally. Karla had been asking about when this would finally occur so we thought it was our asking that had finally brought this about. However, the arrival of a nurse practitioner shortly after getting settled in the room changed everything. He looked sombre, and proceeded to tell us that what I was experiencing was indeed an appendicitis attack, but that it had been brought on by a tumor on my colon, specifically the cecum. Whack! I felt like I had been slapped in the face. What? Me? But he kept talking...unfortunately, the cancer had spread, with the CT scan showing small tumors in my lungs and lymph nodes, and more tumors in my liver. I looked for something in his eyes or expression to give me something positive, something like "but this can be treated and beaten". No more information was forthcoming. That was it. I had Stage 4 Colon Cancer and he thankfully left Karla and I alone to shed some tears and think about how are lives had changed so dramatically in that instant.
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