Hi I was a forty year old tree climber/surgeon with my own company when I started feeling bad, kind of tired all the time. I had never had more than a bad cold as far as being sick went. I had a few bad cuts, and a couple broken bones, and a crushing accident to the abdomen had sent my to the hospital in 2001. I checked out fine after a long night in the hospital, with a cat scan, digital exam, and observation.

Well in January 2003 was when I started feeling sick sometimes, and unusually tired. I may of that year I had some rectal bleeding, I could no longer put it of to to much work, so I went to the doctor. He found a lump, mass in the rectal canal, took a biopsy and sent me home. Two weeks of worry led to a benign mass that would be easy to remove. I was still a little worried, and rightly so.

After the surgery I felt like a new man. It was incredible what a drain this mass had been putting on my system. Then came the call, we need to see you back in the office. I was told then that another biopsy came back positive for squamous cell carcinoma, Laugh out loud, what the hell is that. Well I found out that it was quite a bad thing to have, a very aggressive cancer of which I was in the later stages.

The last month had been a blur, a lot of denial, what if this, what if that. Then the doctors said you need chemotherapy and radiation treatment. I went ahead with the treatment, and my life slowly fell apart. I did not handle the radiation or the chemotherapy well, in the end they said I was having an allergic type of reaction to both.

Now it has been four years and three full months, I still take morphine, and other drugs to kill the pain of a two inch by eight inch open wound where my rectum once was, it is now on my stomach " THANK GOD " lot lees pain. I have even worse damage, burns inside of me, one of the great things about the radiation it cooks yoy inside and out. My only hope to live more than another 6 months maybe a year is to have a radical surgery to remove all the damaged tissue, the rectum, rectal canal, three or so inches of the colon, some surrounding tissue, and an eight inch diameter area of skin. All of this is to be replaced with half of my abdominal wall and skin, which will not be fully detached, but dissected down to where it can be pulled through to the back, to assure a viable blood supply, so the transplant can live. I am given odds of fifty fifty I will survive more than a couple months. If it the transplant takes I could live out a simple life, no more cutting trees, or construction, but I would be out of most of the pain, and most of all I would be alive.

Now how do You deal with this you say? Well unless You are the suicidal, quitting/give up type, NOT ME you have no other choice but to deal with it. I have not slept for more than three hours straight since the beginning. For the pain usually wakes me hourly. I love life, and will fight to the end. I hope that You never come to understand what I am talking about, I can not sit down, I must sit on one hip or the other, needless to say most of my life now is spent in bed, laying down. For me this was worse than a death sentence, I was all about outdoor physical activity, loved my tree removal/trimming business. To tell you the truth if I were one hundred percent/hell ninety percent sure there is a after life I would be there waiting to meet You, laugh out loud. I am no quitter, nothing has come easy for me, and I love life it is so wonderful an thing one thousand years would be to short a time for me to see all and do all I would like.

Life is short, never waste today, for tomorrow may never come. May you NEVER understand what I know.

Learn more about this author, OAHU LOPAKA.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Accepting your diagnosis of cancer?
We want to hear your view. Write now!