For When They’re Ready (FWTR) - Diagnosis

This is the first post in a series I'm titling "For When They're Ready". Kelly, when the girls are old enough feel free to share this with them. I'll let you determine when is "old enough", you've always been way better at that sort of thing. And hey, I'm not ruling out that I'm the guy to show them this post, but just in case.

So girls, you wouldn't start the saga of a super-hero without diving into their origin story, right? While mine doesn't involve radioactive spiders or some sort of supernatural encounter it certainly changed all of our lives rather drastically and very quickly.

Summer 2022 and the living is easy. We just got back from an amazing trip to Maui that had been your mother's dream for some time. Things were super simple. We were gearing up for Caroline to start Kindergarten and enjoying the best time of the year in Michigan.

Around this time I started to experience some discomfort in my abdomen, generally in the mornings. Being the stubborn oaf that I am, I generally brushed it aside until it was too much. I made an appointment with a doctor at our PCP's office who didn't really know what to make of it. In the end we decided to make a change to my diet and see what happened. Maybe I was just constipated? I had a scheduled colonoscopy the next week as a precaution, but never thought I would truly need it.

Now Caroline, you might remember the morning your mother took me to the Emergency Department (ED). We were in a bit of a panic as the pain for me had gotten unbearable. I was doubled over in agony. We raced to Ann Arbor where your mom dropped me at the Emergency Department and proceeded to take Moira to daycare. Now, the hospital was still very conscious about covid at this point so I masked up and fell into a chair in one of their triage bays while I writhed in agony. They proceeded to test me for covid and then shuttled me into a waiting room. I remember looking around the room and thinking I didn't belong there. While I was waiting I was able to use a restroom and generally the pain subsided. I felt stupid for still being there.

Eventually they called me back into the ED, and placed me on a stretcher in the hallway. That was my first signal that they didn't expect that there was much wrong with me. I was sure that all the sicker patients got preferential treatment and weren't placed in the hallway. The staff there was obviously frazzled from how busy the department was and people walked back and forth past me for what seemed like forever before I talked to someone. When I talked to the Fellow they were pretty sure that I didn't have anything particularly wrong with me, and were considering sending me home on stool softeners. And while I really wanted that to be what was going on, I knew there was something more to it. The Attending came by later to talk to me and I pressed to get a CT scan, or anything really to figure this out, because sending me home at that point wasn't going to work for me.

Pretty quickly they shuttled me to CT and the scan was over relatively fast. They dropped me back off in my hallway to sip water out of a styrofoam cup while I awaited the results. While I waited I decided to stare into my phone for a while to pass the time. I still remember the feeling. Seeing the notification of a new test result, and reading the radiology impression from the CT. Primary mass in sigmoid colon. Likely metastases (8 or 9) in liver. Potential matesteses on lungs.

I was floored.

Shortly after I read this your mother arrived and I couldn't even speak. I handed her the phone and she read what I had just seen. We were both in disbelief. How could this be happening? A kind nurse could tell I was distraught, "did you read your CT results?" She asked. I nodded. "Let's get you a room." The Fellow from earlier came in and showed us the imaging, and from there our lives were forever changed.