My fight against Familial Adenomatous Polyposis

My name is Stephanie George and this year has been a pretty rocky year for me. I thought when this year started out this was going to be a wonderful year even though a lot of things were up in the air for me. At the end of last year, my husband and I decided to get a divorce. Being single hasn’t been easy. It took a while to get into a stable place to live. Once I got myself together somewhat, I knew I had to get a colonoscopy. When the situation with covid hit, I had to put that off for a few months.

Finally on June 26, 2020 I was able to get it taken care of. At least that’s what I was thinking that morning. Once they woke me up from general anesthesia, the first words I heard was, “Ms. George, are you awake? We found a lot of polyps in your colon so you’re going to have to have it removed.” I was floored. I wasn’t expecting that, so I asked them to repeat that. Finally they told me that I had hundreds of polyps, and they suspected I had FAP. Right away they gave me a number to a geneticist and a surgeon. I had never had a stitch or a broken bone. I was not prepared for this. FAP stands for Familial Adenomatous Polyposis. It’s a very rare condition. It comes from a mutated gene and can be hereditary. I suspect that I didn’t inherit this from my parents because if you have this you will get Colorectal cancer in your 40’s and my parents haven’t. The only way to remove the risk of that happening is to remove the colon and rectum. The genetic testing did prove my GI doctor correct. When the geneticist gave me the results to the test, she said she had never seen the genes that were mutated exactly the way they were in me. This is a good thing, she said most likely because of the way my genes are I may not ever get polyps in my small intestine or stomach, which usually happens with FAP. That’s a blessing for me, I just want to live as much of a normal life as I can. So the plan that the surgeon and I are hoping for is that I will have my rectum and colon removed and have a temporary stoma. I will need to wear a bag for three months. They will make a j-pouch from my small intestine and sew it to what is left so that I should be able to not have a permanent bag. Please pray that this surgery goes accordingly because there are some factors that could make that impossible. After 3 months, once the surgery heals, then they will go back in and  sew my small intestine back together. So after 6 weeks hopefully I’ll be back to my old self.

    Please consider donating to my cause. For the first 6 weeks after surgery, I won’t be able to work. And I’m not really sure about after those 6 weeks because it depends if any complications come up. Also after the second surgery I’ll be out of work for 6 weeks as well. The money I would receive from this site would go toward my copays, hospital stay, illeostomy supplies and the bills that I won’t be able to cover while out of work. Any contribution, no matter how small, would be a huge blessing. Thank you in advance for your prayers and support.