My colon looks super.

I’ve never seen it before but it looks pretty darn good. And so it should given that I spent two days eating only beige foods followed by 24 hours of…evacuation.

Now, it’s up on a screen for my benefit, along with the doctor and team of nurses, as a little camera goes all John McClane through the interior of my Nakatomi Plaza.

At the same time, one of the nurses is trying to make polite conversation, chatting about Jersey house prices and the weather.

While trying to come up with a non-awkward response, the image on screen changes subtly. The pale colours and emptiness have been replaced by dark walls and reds. The camera has stopped moving and is looking nervously around, like it’s been on a tourist trail and walked down the wrong alley.

I have no medical training and don’t know what I’m looking at but it doesn’t look good.

When the nurse says that the doctor wants me to wait behind for a chat, I doubt it’s to congratulate me on how good my colon looks.

Scratching that itch

For some time I’d had a mild, full body itching which comes and goes seemingly randomly.

I’d thought about going to the doctor in March about it but felt a little embarrassed. Then one night it felt like I’d walked through a patch of poison ivy on the way home.

I couldn’t stop scratching. I changed clothes. I showered. I had a lie down. And the next morning I booked into see the GP.

I’m going to paraphrase but basically “could be anything, let’s do some tests”.

Those tests came back as low iron – OK I’d been a bad vegetarian. But also low haemoglobin, which was slightly more of an issue. Let’s do some more tests.

This is slightly graphic but more tests meant testing stool for blood and the only way to do that is create a landing zone of toilet paper in the loo then use a toothpick to collect a tiny bit of poop and pop it in a post box.

Feels like normally that would be the kind of thing that gets you sectioned. Or firmly told off by the police but in this case, it just meant…a positive result and more tests.

Which brings us back to a camera down my throat, and then up my bum. Strictly in that order.

Likely or highly likely

Sat on my own in a recovery room, it’s not even an agonising wait. I’d already text my partner:

“They found something that was bleeding and looked gross”

The doctor came in said that they’d found a lesion. While it needed further tests, it was likely or highly likely that it was cancerous – I couldn’t remember which but once you hear the C word it didn’t really feel like it made a massive amount of difference.

And it didn’t really make a difference to the rest of my life and we all lived happily ever after. The End.

LOL no such luck but it had no effect on the rest of my week. Back to work with the slightly weighty cloud hanging above me. Or at least that would’ve been the plan if I hadn’t caught covid…not a fun week all round.

The speed of progression from GP visit to probable diagnosis is so fast I’m still not sure that I’m conscious it’s happening – and this is talking from three weeks post op (spoiler alert). I’d also like to point out that this was all done through the Jersey equivalent of the NHS (I’m still not sure how it works) so as always a thousand thank yous and admiration goes to the people that have made it such a smooth journey.

Following the colonoscopy, I was referred to a surgeon and a CT scan to see if the tumour/lesion had spread.

Confusingly, the surgeon was due to be away on annual leave when I got the scan and also when the results would come back, but as he’d already found out from the biopsies, it was cancer. That meant he basically knew what needed to be done – the scan would just confirm how.

A laproscopic hemicolectomy – right or left depending on CT scan – meant whipping half of my large intestine out through a hole in my belly button. Aside from a bit of a scar there and a couple of small notches around the rest of my tummy, there wouldn’t be much evidence it had happened.

Of course, I was given the positive news first, followed up by a seemingly endless list of things that could go wrong including sepsis, stoma bags and ultimately death.

I didn’t really need to hear these, despite knowing he had to mention them. Firstly, knowing about the risks doesn’t really help. And secondly, it’s not like I was going to decide against the procedure.

“You know what Doc, I might just leave the cancer there and hope it goes away anyway. Appreciate your input though.” Said nobody ever.

Fly away with Venga Airways

It’s always encouraged that you bring someone with you to important medical appointments as the patient has a habit of drifting away or only hearing what they want to hear.

In this case, he told me I should expect something something and also no flying and running.

“Can I walk a marathon?”

“We encourage you to walk…” he started before the Nurse Specialist said “not a marathon”. “And no flying for 6 weeks due to potential blood clots”.

Balls. That’s Berlin Marathon and the Nice UTMB 50K out then. Plus you know, the whole cancer thing.

And suddenly it occurred to me that I had three weeks to get away from Jersey before I might not be able to. Ideally it would be maximum of six weeks following surgery but if the complications happened, including death, it would be much, much longer.

So after a little medical googling and asking of questions, followed by almost non-stop searching of the BA website, I managed to get myself a few days in London to see my tiny little niece, brother, his wife, my dad and his wife, plus some of Tooting’s finest veggie curries (handy having special care baby unit nearby) and a couple of West End beers.

After that, I made the short trip to Ibiza to enjoy absolutely zero partying but plenty of Uno, a few seaside swims and lots of sun before…well I didn’t know what. If it sounds like a super cool celeb lifestyle, it kinda was but in a cheap, buying crisps from a corner shop rather than our hotel way. We also listened to Roger Sanchez as the sun set (again we were outside the official party but you could still hear it while we made sangria in the apartment).

But Pete Tong was sat in front of me on the way out there. And someone from a home design show was in front of me on the back (not Kevin McCloud) so it was a bit cool.

The main thing was that I had a whole week of not worrying about cancer, appointments, tests, and Jersey weather.

As soon as I landed back on the island, a) it was pissing down; and b) I had meetings with anaesthetists, nurses, surgeons, pathologists, and lawyers.

I’m not going to say that this was the hardest part of all this but, an emergency will does bring things into perspective.

After all that, I actually have to go and do the surgery bit. See you in part 2.