There were other signs, like bloating and abdominal discomfort, but it was the rectal bleeding that led Catherine Perka to a gastroenterologist and a cancer diagnosis: 'The whole thing feels like, I want to say a dream, but it was more like a nightmare.'Basically, in the late summer of 2021 into the early fall, I was throwing up occasionally. No other symptoms — just running to the bathroom to throw up, no pain or anything.
At the same time, I was also talking with the GI specialist I see in Sudbury. In early January 2022, I described some of the symptoms I was having, and she said Looking back on it, what I should have done is, in the fall of 2021, I should have asked for a barium trace, — where you drink the milkshake and then they X-ray your guts. Because that would have lit up the blockage like crazy. I’m not criticizing the doctors or anything but, you know, a different approach might have found this thing a little bit early. But at the end of the end of the day, they got me into the hospital as soon as they figured out what was going on.
I got out of hospital around the middle of February 2022, and I was back into Sudbury to see one of the oncologists in March, maybe late February. The unfortunate reality for where my cancer was located was radiology was not an option; chemo was the only option. The radiology specialist said the cancer [was] so deep in my body the beam would scorch the skin and organs on the way through.I started chemo at the end of March. As I said earlier, where I live, health care is still on the ground.
But what I found was about two or three days after the chemo, I was just laid out with no energy. Just dragged myself out of bed, dragged myself around the house. It was a struggle to make just a bowl of soup and have a bowl of soup for lunch or dinner, and that lasted for maybe a day to 36 hours. Then I [would start] bouncing back.
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