Day 66 - Dress in Blue Today! *Now With Gory Details! in These Foolish Things

I started writing a whole Updates on Various entry and this was one of my bullet points, but I decided that this important subject needs its own entry, so here you go:

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness month.

In fact, today is Colon Cancer Awareness Day (March 7th, 2025).

I’m honestly still in my workout clothes because I’m taking it easy at work today, but when I finally get myself dressed, I will be wearing blue (the official colon cancer color). Today is Dress in Blue Day to raise awareness about colorectal cancer.

Did you know that colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the world? It’s a fucking bitch, and it’s so highly treatable.

The problem is, and I personally KNOW this to be true, there is so much shame about that part of our body! Nobody talks seriously about POOP. Nobody wants to think there’s something wrong with their guts and shitter. And then people wait until it’s too late.

I’m a perfect example. I was having ALL KINDS of issues with my bowels, and I blew them off and then my own doctor blew my symptoms off because he thought I was too healthy to have colon issues. It’s an old man’s disease! Alas, I was late-stage (IIIB) by the time they figured it out.

I’m serious when I say, it doesn’t matter how old/young you are - GET YOUR booty/colon/innards checked if you’re having issues, and DO NOT LET A DOCTOR BLOW YOU OFF!!! Make sure you insist on getting answers. I have too many young, YOUNG cancer friends (like, in their 30s and even younger!) who are Stage 4 and incurable…and dying…because they were “too young” to get colon cancer.

If you have any questions, any at all, you are welcome to private message me. I love helping people going through cancer issues. It’s very therapeutic to me. I’m happy to try to help point you (and your butt) in the right direction.

I love you 💙,
GS

UPDATE: I was asked several times about what my symptoms were, so here goes…

deep breath

This will be TMI for some, so scroll away if you don’t like bodily function talk.

I always had some form of constipation my whole life, but during my 40s (when the tumor/cancer cells started to grow), I had all kinds of changes to my habits and physical changes too. First of all, I ate terribly, drank a TON of alcohol, smoked, and had a very, very stressful job as well as two massive stints with a severely broken heart (one engagement that turned violent and another engagement to a cheating philanderer), and I rarely slept at night. I’m not saying that caused my cancer, but I know for sure it didn’t help.

So, the signs went like this:

• The biggest symptom was blood in stool. Now, because of constipation all of my life (I’d go number two about once or twice a week), there were times that I’d have blood, but that was because my poop was so hard it would injure my butthole and make it bleed. However, there was one incident that caused me to panic: I filled the toilet with bright red blood. Like…it was explosive poo and the water was bright, bright red. And that’s what finally caused me to call my doc and ask him if I needed to go to the emergency room. He told me that it was hemorrhoids. And this put my mind at ease. It shouldn’t have, because that was NOT normal, but it did. He told me that if the blood didn’t go away in a couple of weeks, he’d refer me to a surgeon who could just clip the little buggers. It didn’t go away. I never had a toilet-filling episode like that again, but the blood kept coming every time I went.

• Night sweats. I thought this was peri-menopause, so I blew it off. But I was sweating through the sheets every night - soaking through to the mattress. This came on suddenly about 3 or 4 months before we discovered it was cancer.

• Noticeable changes in bowels. One week, I’d go number 2 daily, and easily, and then next week, I’d get so impacted that I had to have “help” either in the form of a laxative or physically breaking it up in chunks. Yes, so fucking gross.

So a few weeks of those above symptoms, and I knew something was NOT GOOD in my bowels. I knew things were off, but I never thought that it was cancer. I was SO NERVOUS that I confided in multiple friends who’d tell me that they had bowel issues, and some even had to have medical attention due to their poop issues, but EVERYONE said that there was NO WAY it could be cancer.

But the minute I woke up from that first colonoscopy, the surgeon didn’t sugar-coat anything: indeed it was a tumor and indeed he was going to help me.

And he did. And I’m grateful, but ughhhh. It’s been a long and winding road. Surgeries, scans, chemotherapy, more colonoscopies, so many meds… and still I have to see my docs on the regular for surveillance. And I WANT to be surveilled! I gotta watch that shit - LITERALLY!

I recommend to anyone if they see any indication of blood in their stool to make sure to speak with a doctor about it. And if it persists, MAKE SURE to get answers. Yes, it’s horrifically embarrassing. I had a doctor make me pull my pants down and kneel on a special stool and bend my whole body over it while he probed my booty hole with a special scope (yes, while I was awake! I had NO IDEA he was going to do that!) only to tell me that he needed to probe further via colonoscopy.

And my other recommendation is to always try to remain as regular as possible. I feel like I held things in too much, both physically and emotionally. My body was full of poison! And I never let it rest or heal or release the toxins. No wonder I wasn’t pooping properly. It was a feeding ground for cancer cells!

Take care of yourself.

And I hope by being graphic it has helped you to understand a little better. But I’m happy to write more, because again, this is highly therapeutic for me. So…anything else?? 😊