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Share your quitting journey

What you can't see can kill you (Updated)

JonesCarpeDiem
Member
1 9 95
‎07-23-2019 09:56 AM

      I had my upper endoscopy and a colonoscopy a week ago and they took a bunch of biopsies. He was concerned about a flat lesion in my colon and mentioned the C word.

      I got a message yesterday morning to check the portal for a new result.

      I didn't want to know so I put off opening it until this morning. It was just a blood glucose result. 

      This waiting can be unnerving because your near future plans could be turned upside down. I ordered tile for our shower yesterday and it won't be in for a week. As, I'm doing the install, if he wants me in for surgery immediately and there's a recovery period, those plans are delayed and due to extenuating circumstances, the work has to be completed by August 6.

      One of those two scenarios is going to happen. Surgery or tile.

      And so....I wait

______________________________________________________________________________________________

      It appears I will be doing the tile 

The good news is my upper endoscopy showed NO HIGH GRADE DISPLASIA for the first time in 5 years.

You have to realize when I met with the Dr. the first time, he wanted to remove my esophagus. He's been cutting and burning bad areas of my esophagus every 4 months since that time, so, we've come a long way.

The bad news is, that lesion in my colon is at the same stage my esophagus was at the beginning.

He wants me to meet with a surgeon to discuss the complexity of the surgery, get a cat scan, and circle back to him.

It sounds like this will take over a month.

And so....I wait

9 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.