The Journey Begins

As a way to begin this blog, I'll give you a little background of the events from October to November...

In early October, Ed went to see his primary care physician. Ed had lost a lot of weight (about 20 lbs) since early summer and had a persistent cough. Now Ed is not one to go to the doctors unless it's an emergency. "Preventative care" are words that are not in his vocabulary. However, he was concerned enough to make the doctors appointment without any nagging from me. Although the weight loss concerned us, it was the persistent cough that had us more concerned. As I found out later, Ed also had some blood in his stools, but he hadn't told me that. Of course, if you google any of these symptoms on the Web you will get the long list of things that could be wrong.

Anyhow, the initial doctors appointment didn't seem to uncover much. Ed had some blood work done and his white blood count was slightly elevated but "nothing to be concerned about" (yes that is a direct quote). A chest x-ray was also taken to check his lungs (for the cough) and that didn't show anything either. We were told we'd do some more blood tests in another month.

Several weeks later, though, Ed wasn't feeling any better and I encouraged him to call his doctor back and be pushy. As you hear so many times, you need to take your health care into your own hands--you know your body better than anyone else--so he needed to be firm and let the doctor know things were not okay or normal.

So on November 16th Ed was back in his doctor's office. Ed was pretty adamant that if they couldn't figure out what was wrong, then what had they eliminated and what specialists should we see. Additional blood work was done, a urine test was done (which showed protein in the urine), a CT scan was scheduled, and we were referred to a gastroenterologist.

On Wednesday, November 18th, Ed and I headed to Cooley Dickinson Hospital for the CT scan and the next day his doctor called with the results (swollen liver, lump on the esophagus, narrowing of the lower colon and the possibility of cancer). Our appointment with the gastroenterologist was moved up to the following Monday.

By this point, Ed and I were afraid it might be cancer. Google the symptoms and that dreaded word kept popping up. But we tried to remain positive and on Monday, 11/23 we saw Dr. Berkman (Hampshire Gastroenterology) who scheduled Ed for an endoscopy and colonoscopy for the following Thursday. He actually would have liked to have done both procedures sooner but due to the Thanksgiving holiday, this was the earliest Ed could be scheduled.

And the journey begins...