Busy, busy, busy. You know what I mean. Life means having a lot to do, right? And a screening test for bowel cancer can seem irritating. You’ve done it before, why do it again? But I am glad I took it, because otherwise the list of to do things would have become a whole lot more depressing.
The results of the screening came in and I ripped the envelope open, expecting, as usual, to see “it’s all fine”. But it didn’t. I needed a colonoscopy. Not the most fun thing in the world to do, but I went and they took out two small polyps. There was another one, larger that looked benign, but I needed to go to another hospital to have it taken out.
Medical wheels in motion
It’s like my specialist said when I got the all clear aresults of the CT and MRI test, “When it is obvious there is something wrong, you don’t need the screening…”
In January I had my op and was admitted into hospital for two days. I was so nervous, my first hospital stay in 63 years. My ward consisted of two lovely, yet cynical, people who told me things had gone haywire with their ops, and mine would most likely go wrong as well. The tone was set.
And… did things go wrong?
Yeah no, I might say in true kiwi spirit. It wasn’t a completely smooth ride. The computer system had given up when we arrived at the operating theatre. (I swear it wasn’t me.) Then the ops team told me I had two options as my anaesthetist hadn’t turned up either: cancel or proceed with light sedation only. I chose the latter and it was totally do-able, even for a scaredy mouse like me. I found it rewarding to see my lovely clean bowel on the TV-monitor. So I went back to my ward in the best of spirits, and watched the snow covering Groningen under a blanket of calm.
The results
A few weeks later, I found out the polyp although benignhad started growing some bad cells, some might have been transferred through the blood system. So I needed a CT and an MRI, which I had at the end of March. On 9 April, Wim and I got the fantastic news that all was well. For the next five years, I will get half-yearly check ups, for which, again, I am not particularly counting off the days. But if I hadn’t taken part in the screening, I would have developed bowel cancer. So please, if you get an invitation to take part, do! And if you need to follow up, do too!
What had persuaded me to follow up, was the talk I had with the nurse at my local hospital in Leeuwarden. She said, in her 25-years of experience lots of people thought it was unnecessary to go for the colonoscopy, yet none of them went for nothing… Bowel screening is saving a lot of lives!
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