Mike's Colon Cancer Recovery

As if being a single parent to a wonderful 9 year old boy isn't hard enough totally  on your own, I now get to try to explain  to him as to why I've been so fatigued and ill for the last 6 months. After months of severe abdominal pains and a  weight loss of 30 pounds, my friends and family convinced me to see a doctor. As stubborn as I am I put it off so long until I could no longer keep any food in my system and began throwing the slightest of foods back up. Being self-employed and without health coverage, at the time, made me hesitant to seek medical attention. On June, 25th 2018 I could no longer tolerate the pain and went to immediate care. After blood work and some exams I was released but if I couldn't keep food down then I was to go to ER. The next day I admitted myself into the ER. after 3 hours of more blood work, exams, and a CT scan  the doctor knelt down next to my bed. He began to explain that after looking over the images and with the symptoms I've been having it seems I could have a cancerous tumor in my large intestine. The doctor then made a few calls and pulled a few strings to get me into see a GI specialist ASAP. I was scheduled for a colonoscopy, at age 46, for July 3rd.  After the awful clean out the day before I was ready to get this over with.  when I awoke from the 15 minute procedure and had my bearings together we got to see the doctor with some results. He began the conversation with a sorry and proceeded to explain that I have cancer of the colon close to blocking and my next step would be to schedule surgery to remove this and hope nothing has spread to other parts of my body. Fortunately the images from my prior CT scan didn't show any signs of cancer in my kidneys or liver.  Now informed with a bit of insight and knowledge of what course of action to take next I scheduled a consultation visit with an even more specialized surgeon to remove this tumor.  July 24th was the intended date for surgery but after no bowel movements for 5 days and major abdominal pain,  they needed to get me into surgery even sooner and will need another CT scan of my chest and lungs and even more blood drawn. Rescheduled for surgery on July 17th, they were able to squeeze my CT scan in on Monday the 16th, the day before surgery.  The results came back NEGATIVE. So excited that the cancer didn't spread to my lungs and finally a bit of good news after this three week long roller coaster. Its now July 17th and I'm going in for  a four hour surgery to remove a section of my large intestine and to re attach it to my colon. A laparoscopic abdominoperineal resection would be how the doctors refer to it. After almost exactly four hours under the knife, which only seemed like a moment to me, I was being wheeled off to a recovery room.  Barely awake if I can even recall. The surgery went very well and they removed an apple sized tumor from my colon. Everything seems great and awaiting the final test results to see if I still may have to do chemo which shall be around the 24th. Not looking forward to 6 weeks off without any income coming in but I know with friends and family and the comfort and support from everyone, we shall make this journey a successful one. 
Thank You to all for reading my story and sorry for being so absent the last few months. I can't wait to get better and get back to a more comforting life.