Anally Raped by a Jackhammer?

I'd had rectal pain and bleeding for years, before I moved to California. In fact, back in 1995, I had read a book called Why Christians Get Sick and decided to radically change my diet, in order to prevent cancer, or to reverse cancer I felt sure I may already have. I'll write more about that later, but the information in that book and more is all available at www.hacres.com.

In 2007, rectal pain and bleeding became frequent and severe. I went for a colonoscopy and was tested for many possible issues. I was told I was fine. In fall of 2008, I moved to California, leaving my car behind. I would ride public transportation everywhere. On the city's buses, I would be in excruciating pain. I thought the buses were horribly engineered to cause pain and suffering. I felt like I was being anally raped with a jackhammer, every time I sat on a bus. Rectal bleeding increased to the point where there would be bright red clouds of blood in the toilet after a bowel movement.

After several months, as pain and bleeding continued to worsen, I began to fear that I had colon or rectal cancer, and I could hardly wait until I had health insurance through my job, which finally happened, late in 2009. I had met a nurse on the bus, before I had insurance, who had said that the recession was resulting in many deaths among patients at her practice. She said a lot of people who lost their jobs and had no insurance were waiting too long to see the doctor about their symptoms, and by the time they came in, the cancer was so advanced that they could not be saved. She worked in a gastroenterology office.

I made an appointment with my newly selected primary care physician, and I told her my symptoms. She exclaimed, "Oh, my GOd, I hope it's not too late!" And then she calmed a bit and said, "Forgive me, but you could have, I'm sorry, CANCER." She requested an authorization for a visit to a gastroenterologist. I saw Dr. Fisher. He said he'd request an authorization for a colonoscopy. Meanwhile, the bleeding increased.

I called the insurance company to inquire why it was taking so long to approve my authorization. The process seemed to drag on and on. I remember shouting at the person on the phone that I was sure I had cancer and that they were endangering my life by delay.

Finally, the authorization came through. And then it took a while for the gastroenterologist's assistant to schedule me for the procedure.

Nick of time

So the supplies came today. Just in the nick of time. I have horrible diarrhea. It's bloody, and it smells strangely sweet, not at all "poopy"... maybe because everything is moving through so fast that it cannot ferment... although there's lots of gas. Why am I writing this "too much information" in my blog? Because nobody reads it. I'm the only one reading my blog.

I did sign up for Relay for Life today, and I listed my blog on my profile. So there's a chance someone on the Relay for Life website might see it and start reading my blog. If you are such a person, please forgive the absence of personal boundaries. I am likely to share almost anything.

I received a card in the mail from Relay for Life, inviting me to have breakfast this Sunday, June 4th, at Dillon's Irish Pub, in my neighborhood. It said I should RSVP by either calling or emailing one of two people or at the website relayforlife.org/hollywoodca. I went to the website but didn't see any information about the breakfast. I guess I'll have to email or call someone.

It felt a little strange... the card says they want to celebrate cancer survivors as inspirational heroes. I don't feel like an inspirational hero.

I wonder how I can make my cancer stories inspiring.

Look, if you have anal cancer, I'm not here to inspire you with heartwarming stories. I will tell you that if your doctor says you need a colostomy, you should get one. Get the cancer cut out of your body. Stop eating junk and stay away from smokers, and if you smoke, quit.

Chemo, radiation, and surgery all are horrific, in different ways. Living with an ostomy isn't fun.

Tomorrow is my birthday. Maybe that's why I'm invited to breakfast. The back of the card says "American Cancer Society -- The Official Sponsor of Birthdays. We save lives and create more birthdays by helping you stay well, helping you get well, by finding cures, and by fighting back."

My friend Donnie is over. He argued with me a bit about allopathic medicine. He doesn't believe in it. So I had the big spiel about how I used to spurn doctors and health insurance in favor of a mostly raw, vegan diet, lots of fresh carrot juice, and supplements as a cure for cancer, and how, before that, I was a "word of faith" Christian, believing that God would heal everyone who asks, if they have enough faith. But now, having been told I had cancer, and having had discussions with the doctors about how my death would have occurred, if I didn't submit to the surgery... I opted to have the doctors work their "magic" and let God choose to do a miracle if He wants to, but not to leave anything undone that might bring about my survival...

I realize I'm going to die someday, of something, as will everyone else on this planet. But for now, I'm doing everything I can do to postpone the inevitable and to live without the horrible pain and discomfort that plagued me while the cancer was still in my body.

Now... if I can just figure out how to stop the cycle of constipation, diarrhea, constipation, diarrhea...

So much for ordering supplies in plenty of time

I ordered new ostomy supplies last week. They promised I'd have them by Tuesday, at the latest. This is Tuesday night. No bags were delivered. I will have to call tomorrow and find out when I can expect delivery. I'm down to just a few adhesive "wafers" and about ten bags. That will last a few days, but I don't want to run out.

I wonder if my insurance company declined to approve the shipment. Those stupid jerks. I hate them.

And I have horrible back pain today. I took a Percocet a while ago, so the back feels a tad better.

Donnie came to visit today. He got rained off the beach last night.

Now he has keys to our apartment, so that if he has weather issues again, he can come and stay here, until it clears up.

Maybe this is stupid.

But it was very nice to see him. I'm probably really high on the painkiller at the moment, but... I think I'll still be glad, tomorrow, that I know he has a safe place to land if life as a homeless guy gets too scary, cold, wet, or lonely.

Now... back to the job search tomorrow.

I have an agenda. Can't stay awake to write it down at the moment. But I should recall it all, tomorrow. Good night.

Did I say that here?

I know that somewhere on the vast blogosphere, I wrote, the other day, that I rather liked constipation, because it kept me from using too many bags. Insurance companies limit the amount they'll cover per month. I guess they decide how fast your body will break down the adhesive or how many bags you'll fill in a month's time. And my body uses more than the allowed limits.

I should stop eating.

But here's the thing... I should not have said I preferred constipation, because no sooner was that thought "out there" in the universe, than I became so extremely constipated that nothing could enter my intestines from the stomach. I writhed in pain for most of yesterday afternoon and evening, until I began vomiting, which happened a few times over the course of a few hours. I finally slept and then at four in the morning, I awakened and found a little squirt bottle, which I filled with warm water and used for an enema. I didn't get much water in... and not much came out... but the slow, sluggish pace that is usual for my intestines did resume.

Tonight, i drank a cup of chocolate laxative tea. It has had no effect whatsoever.

But at least I don't have the extreme cramping and vomiting.

I do not like the way my body works anymore.

When I have the kind of cramping that sends most people running to the toilet, I cannot go there. SOmetimes I do, anyway, but there is no point, except, perhaps, a bit of psychological relief. I have no anus. Nothing will ever exit from that orifice again. There is no orifice there, at all. Just a lump of scar tissue. The shop is closed. And very little moves through the newer hole on my abdomen. ANd when it moves, it must empty into a bag, which I must then empty and clean.

Some days I remove the bag dozens of times and clean out tiny little amounts of stool, over and over and over again, cleaning the bag until it's spotless, only to take it off and do it again, when another little morsel enters the bag. It's an obsession, at times. I have better days... days when I don't mind that the bag is filling under my clothes. Those are usually days when the stool is soft, almost liquid, and it flows easily into the lower part of the bag, instead of lumping up around the snap ring, making a pyramid on my belly.

I cannot figure out how to make my body produce the right consistency of excrement. Soft, hard, liquid, solid... it cannot make up its mind. Diet doesn't seem to affect it. Or does it? I think I ate more salads on the days when it was soft. Tomorrow, I'll eat a big salad for lunch, and another for dinner.

Shakespeare for Ostomates

I am here, in Hollywood, California, out of a job, nearly out of unemployment benefits, and I'm acting in a play. I've done several plays here. Currently, I'm Lady Capulet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

I was a bit worried, last night, that the bag was filling too fast. I thought it might fill up, get too heavy for the adhesive, and pull off my belly while I was performing. Of course, had that happened, my underwear and tights and the long, tight tank shirt I wore under my costume would have held it in place. But what if it overflowed?

I couldn't risk it. I had to go around in front of the theatre, in costume, sneak past a couple of audience members lingering on the sidewalk, and dash up to the theatre offices to use the bathroom. The bag was nowhere near full. I wrapped it carefully in a disposal bag and buried it under all the paper towels in the wastebasket, hoping someone would empty the wastebasket long before any odor could emanate from it.

I got through the performance without giving another thought to the bag. Or did I? I think I felt for it every time I was offstage. I also worried that I might have forgotten to close the end of the fresh bag, so I kept trying to feel for the closure, but since it just rolls and closes with very thin velcro, I couldn't really be sure I had sealed it...

But... at least whenever I was ON the stage, I was completely immersed in being Lady Capulet. Lady Capulet, the ostomate.

Now, if I could only get an important producer or agent to come and see me.

Maybe I'll send out a bunch of headshots and resumes with cards about next weeks performance, tomorrow. For now, I'm going to church, and then to shop, and when I come home I'm making dinner for my cousin.

She'll be here at six. Time flies.

My doctor "ripped me a new one".

I've often heard people say, "The thing about assholes is, everybody's got one." Well it isn't true. I don't have one. I used to, but my doctor cut it out and sewed it up. He "ripped me a new one," as it were, but it's on my abdomen. It also has a parastomal hernia. It looks like he sewed a softball into my belly. And the stoma, the bit of intestine that protrudes from the middle of the hernia, is a big, red, wrinkly lump. It looks like I have a third breast, under my belt. It sticks out as far. I wonder if, when I lose more weight, it will protrude just as far, or if there is fat over the bulging peritoneum, which will go away when I am thinner. I would like to think it would disappear on its own, if I can just work off a few pounds. But despite daily walks or hikes or yoga, my weight remains stable.

Initially, after the surgery, I lost quite a bit of weight. I gained about ten pounds back, when my appetite returned. I want to lose them again.

It seems, often, that I am dehydrated and constipated. I like to be constipated, because it doesn't require as many bag changes, and the solid excrement doesn't break down the adhesive the way softer, more liquid stools do.

I have a bit of a problem with what other ostomates call "pancaking". The adhesive barrier has a plastic ring onto which I snap the bags. That ring tends to corral the "poop" as it exits the stoma, and it all just piles up in that circle, until there is so much that it squeezes down into the very commodious bag. But the hump of shit that piles up inside the ring looks ridiculous under my clothes. To me it does, anyway. I was on a film shoot a few weeks ago, and when I learned that the two costume techs, both in their twenties, have had cancer, I told them about mine. I told them about my self-consciousness about the hernia and the bag. The female costume tech said, "I never even noticed, and I dressed you." She didn't actually "dress" me. She simply approved the clothing I put on, after I donned it. So... my 'hump" wasn't noticeable to her at all. After learning of the hump, she told me that I should always buy dresses in that cut, because I looked wonderful in it, and she said I'd also look great in A-line dresses, which would really flatter and camouflage anything below the waist.

She'd had a non-malignant cancer removed from her back. The male costume tech has had cancer all through his major organs and in his bones. they both look so beautiful and healthy that it filled me with hope, althoug I also felt a little sad and a little worried for the young man.

We are all human. We are all prone to diseases of every kind. Anyone can be afflicted with any illness at any time. You can do things to reduce your risk, but you can never eliminate all the risks. And if you could, there are still risks, from accidents, random violence, and natural or manmade disasters. So whether you have cancer or not, you should live every day as if it might be your last. Savor every moment. Treat those around you with love. Be kind. Be wise.

And when you feel the urge to tell someone something offensive, refrain. You never know how deeply it might wound them. And if you are wounded by their words, but you love them, suck it up. Consider that they do not realize they are hurting you, and that if they could feel the pain they are causing you, they would never have inflicted it. Shake off the offense. Find a way to counteract its effects on your psyche. Your emotions have power to affect your health, negatively or positively. Choose to love those who hurt you, and not to retaliate with more hurtful words.

It is certain that there are some who wound us deliberately, in word and in deed.

I wonder what motivates them.

I wonder if they have an emotional cancer that is eating away their souls.

I have resolved to be like the wise person who "studies to answer" instead of the fool who "opens wide his mouth."

I am pondering some remarks from a dear friend. They wounded me. But this friend has many deep and painful wounds. I had inadvertently added to them. I would not, for all the world, wound again, lest the resulting pain be so unbearable that it precipitates a rash and irrevocable response. I wish to heal, not to harm, to build and not tear down, and to love without judgment or criticism.

I don't want to be somebody's asshole. I'm not going to rip anybody a new one.

So I avoid blogging

Every so often I feel a strong urge to blog about the anal cancer or the horrific details of life with an ostomy. But this is not one of those times. Usually when the impulse strikes, it's because something awful has happened, and ... I don't really want to publish the worst things that happen.

Today, I'm just blogging because I'm here, at my desk, late at night, in the quiet, while everyone else is sleeping... and I feel like writing. No passionate treatise on anything important. Just... stuff.

But I'm tired. A quiet night is a wonderful thing. I think I'll go empty the bag again, and get to bed.

I feel brand new

I just started wearing a new brand of ostomy bag. It's not new... just new to me. Hollister. This is heavenly. Light as a cloud, but not clammy. In fact it's soft and feels like nothing against my skin. I can't wait to order more of these. I have several more sizes to sample, but I think I love the smallest, closed bag. Wonderful, wonderful weightless, skin-soft bags and wafers. I'm hooked.

Take me Away-- Wait, No...

I-- want someone to take me away. I want someone to take over my life and make it work. I want a new career, and I want money to survive or better, and I want my daughters to have enough money, each, to survive on their own, but I want them to live close enough so that we can all eat together often and go to movies and work on movies together. I want someone to fix my writing so it all works wonderfully and grabs the reader or audience member by the throat and keeps them captive until they've had their fill of laughter, tears, suspense, surprise, and terror and relief... and grief...

BUt really, if I were to live my life passively, just letting everything happen to me and for me, I don't think my life would turn out the way I want it to.

On the other hand, I just feel completely paralyzed to do anything-- even to apply for assistance while the current disaster renders me unable to survive without massive infusions of cash from my mother, who really can't afford to keep it up.

I'm unemployed, and I'm a little too tired and sick to really pound the pavement looking for a new job. Not only that, but I keep having these daggone doctor appointments. I am finally getting over the infection that's responsible for the postponement of my chemotherapy, and now I have three appointments this week. Well, two. I have to make sure someone sets the third-- the one where they'll remove the drain from my butt. I guess I can pick up the phone and call the surgeon to see if he's requested it yet.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with Dr. Botnick at 2. Dr. Botnick is the radiation oncologist. He's just following up. Thursday at three, I see the oncologist about starting chemotherapy. Sometime Thursday or Friday I'm going to have to get this drain removed.

I'm tired, today, and I keep wanting to eat, as if that will mafically make me healthier or happier... but it doesn't. Now I want to quit eating... or I want to take a pain pill and see if my pain will all go away. My lower sacral spinal area is truly in excruciating pain. I guess I'll take a pill and make it go away... or at least decrease it a bit.

I wish I could do something that would fill my bank account with cash, so I oould pay my bills and all these nasty copays for the doctors I'm seeing. I have zero income. None. Zip. Everything I eat or put in the gas tank or wipe my nose with... is all paid for by my mom or my daughters.

And whenever I lie down, the room tilts and then spins, for a moment. I only got a few hours of sleep last night.

I've called the insurance company. They said an urgent request was placed Friday for the CT scan and the procedure at Providence St. Joseph's to remove the drain. So I should hear by Wednesday, at the latest, about that.

I want to open Craigslist and see a gig that's tailor made for me.

I want it to pay big bucks. I want to be the woman they're dreaming of, for the position. BUt look... I've got a doctor appointment tomorrow, another on Thursday, and an outpatient procedure on Friday, unless someone wants to screw up Thursday's doctor appointment by scheduling the procedure at the same time... which would suck. So I hope they just try for Friday.

Meanwhile, I'm in pain and I'm dizzy and I'm depressed. I think I'll just put on a Netflix movie and probably fall asleep.

Somebody, take me away. Somebody make all the medical issues go away. Somebody, give me a few thousand dollars... and fix my car. The radiator leaks and the axle is fractured... and other things are leaking. The brake light is always on...

I'm almost falling asleep as I write this.

I want everything to be wonderful.

But I guess I'm going to have to try to make that happen by myself. Last I looked, nobody was passing out tickets to an easier, painless, beautiful, wonderful life. A few fishermen just drowned in frigid water off the coast of Antarctica... They never had a chance. They didn't have life jackets or immersion suits. The longest they could survive was ten minutes, in that icy water. Their families at home were depending on the income they'd have earned, had the boat not sank. Now they'll have to figure out another way to survive. What do I have to complain about?

Nothing Extraordinary

"She had always been an unusual girl..." is the opening line I penned for my future autobiography when I was eight years old. When you're eight, it's easy to imagine that one day you'll be so astonishingly popular and successful that everyone will want to read about your life. And I knew, from Mrs. Marlin, the third grade teacher who had effused over my opening line in an essay about the Chicago blizzard of 1967, that a gripping opener was essential to capturing a reader's attention.

I guess a great title is probably needful, too. In that case, maybe "Nothing Extraordinary" shouldn't be the title of this blog... or the title I'm contemplating for my autobiographical novel. I'm calling it a novel because that will give me the freedom to launch into any fantasy that pops into my noggin as I'm writing, and it will also give me an opportunity to write the absolute truth without letting anyone know with absolute certainty that I actually did any of the things I might confess to having done.

And since I've had two complete psychotic breaks this year, during which time I experienced an alternate reality that I later found to be entirely fictional, I am fascinated by the possibility that some of my most traumatic memories might actually be the product of temporary insanity, despite their life-altering effects.

I made major changes in my behavior and character after horrific experiences that are indelibly etched in my memory. The possibility that they might never have occurred is slim, I'd say. The difference between those experiences and the brief periods of delusion is that, during those delusional episodes, what I thought was real seemed more like an extended dream... and made less sense than the stories of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, while the experiences of my shockingly wild youth are as memorable as any of the more ordinary experiences I recall-- like the births of my children, the building of our house in Illinois... and the many other events I might chronicle for my children's children in an autobiography that I might or might not claim is factual and accurate.

Life could be short, from here onward. I should do something with the time. I'm not making any money, and I'm not creating any incredible art... so maybe I should write my memoirs, call them fiction or not... and see if there's a publisher who will be as gaga over my writing as Mrs. Marlin was. She pronounced me a writer at the age of eight. I have never been willing to relinquish the title, no matter how badly written any of my material might be.

The first thing I wanted to do today was to blog.

I'm not sure why the cursor on this laptop likes to jump around while I'm typing. All of a sudden, in the middle of a sentence, I find the last several words have leaped into the middle of a previous sentence. I woke today, and reached for this computer, beside my bed. I wanted to blog. I wanted to start the day blogging and blog every day for the next 365 days.

My friend Donnie Harbeck had urged me to do so, last night, during our hours-long conversation. He's been blogging every day, and it's changing his life. Or... he's been changing his life and blogging about it. Anyway, he's DOING something, which is more than can be said of me. I've become incredibly unproductive, and while I'd like to blame it on my health issues, and probably nobody would argue... I have to think that I could be doing a lot more than I've been accomplishing. Maybe blogging about it will shame me into taking action... spur me on to achieving goals...

I have a lot of things I need to do immediately, and I don't want to bore you by listing them, but they're things critical to my family's financial survival... and I keep putting them off and watching movies.

The movie-viewing, I tell myself, is research. I'm learning the craft of screenwriting by watching others' results. One of my goals is to support myself and my family members who need support, with my screenplays. I hope they'll sell and get made into movies and this will become a lucrative career... and sometimes, or maybe all the time, I want to act in the movies I'm writing... and in others that I didn't write..

Sometimes I attend local free movie screenings hosted by Creative Screenwriting Magazine. They have a Q&A with the author(s) after most of these, and that's very informative. I just wish I wasn't so fatigued by the end of these movies that I can barely stay awake for the Q&A's.

Still, I like to go to as many as I can, and I do have several screenplays in various stages of completeness... or incompletion... on my computer. Not this one. They're on my i-Mac. I had them here, too, but this thing crashed a number of times and I had to reformat it. Every time I install Movie Magic Screenwriter, it crashes again.

I might use Celtx, if I decided to write on this computer. And I might do that, because sitting on my butt still hurts too much, and the i-Mac is a desktop.

Today I'm lying on my left side, sinking into the nice memory foam pad beneath my red, knit sheets. The sheets feel soft against my thighs. Last night I was feeling very menopausal-- sweaty and hot, so I slept in nothing but my bra, a tank top, my panties, and my bags. Yes, my bags...ostomy and other... and my hose-- not footwear. An actual hose protrudes from my left buttock and connects, several feet later, to a catheter bag that is conveniently equipped with a belt, in case I should need to conceal it under my clothing and go out in public, which I'll need to do, sometime today.

Meanwhile, the bag lies on the floor next to my bed, slowly filling with clear orange fluid and a few, tiny, red clots. It's not at all disturbing to watch this fluid collect in the bag. It's a relief, after seeing what the doctor collected in syringes at the hospital.

With the help of the CT scanner, the radiologist located a large collection of pus that used to drain out of my body through a hole in the top of my vagina. The hole had been t-- I interrupted the writing of this blog to shower and wash my hair. Correction... I took a sponge bath and washed my hair. I smell all minty now, from Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap, and my hair is all slimy with leave-in conditioner that will make it soft and not frizzy when it dries. I was born with naturally curly hair, but since the cancer diagnosis, and possibly as a side effect of the chemo, my hair has been insanely curly, and I've decided I like it that way. I will no longer use my flat iron to straighten it... unless an acting role demands it.

So anyway, now I'm dressed in a skirt, tank top and sweater. Yes,it's the same tank top I slept in. In fact, I'm also wearing the same panties and bra. The panties are pretty fresh because I'm still wearing and changing the gigantic, extra long,overnight maxi pads that used to collect the pus that was draining through the hole in my vagina, which brings me back to where I was taking you before the bath...

The surgeon tore the hole in the top of my vagina while he was performing the permanent colostomy surgery. It wasn't his fault. Radiation had fused the vagina to my rectum and my rectum to my spine. It was a hellishly long surgery, and a gynecologist came in near the end and repaired the hole and took out my ovaries, to prevent cancer from taking up residence there. The hole must have blown itself wide open, right away, because before I ever left the hospital, liquids began draining from my vagina.

First, it was clear fluid tinged with blood... just like what's in my catheter drain bag, right now. After a couple of months, I hemorrhaged... and giant clots of blood were followed by what looked like a really heavy period for a couple of weeks. But soon, the bleeding gave way to pus. Thick, gray-green, gooey pus. It stank. I went back to the gynecologist, who sent me right over to the hospital ER. They cultured the pus. It was e-coli. I stayed in the hospital a couple of days, receiving intravenous antibiotics and pain meds. I became constipated, vomited, and went home. Oh, they also did a CT scan then, and elected not to insert a drain at that time, since my vagina seemed to be acting as a natural drain. But the pus drained on and on for weeks, a couple of months, maybe, and every time I ran out of Bactrim, a potent antibiotic, I would start to run a fever and feel really sick.

So, finally, Dr. Pourshahmir, the surgeon, decided I should have another CT scan and when he saw the collection of fluid in that scan, he arranged for me to have the abscess drained in the hospital. So that's what happened, and it's why I now have a hole in my butt with a pigtail drain hanging out of it, and why I'm going to be wearing baggy skirts and dresses until the thing comes out, in a couple of weeks. At home, I'll wear whatever I want, because I'll put the bag on the floor. Right now, it's belted around my hips because I'm going out to argue with the Unemployment Insurance office... who totally denied that I earned any income at all, over the past year. Morons.

But that's another story.

If it smells like poop in here, it ain't me, babe.

My 20 year old daughter just walked in the front door and said, "It smells like poop in here."

Her sister piped up, "I just farted. Sorry."

I knew it couldn't be me, even though I've been farting every few minutes and pooping constantly... because all of my gas and excrement empty into a plastic bag that's glued onto my gut... and it's sealed, doesn't leak, and doesn't smell.

I'm getting really sick of emptying and cleaning the bag. I've have very prolific intestines today. ANd right now, about ten minutes after the last time I emptied and cleaned it, it's filling up with gas again. I guess I'll go see what else is in it, and empty it again.

I'll do that, and then I'll take out my contacts and go to bed.

So there you go, Donny. I blogged. I might do it again soon. I will. I will do it soon, again.

I'm not going to lie or say it pretty--
anal cancer is really shitty.

For a week or two I was unable to speak without turning everything into a rhyming limerick. I'm over it. If I'd started blogging then, it would have been more entertaining, but now, with the anti-psychotic drug working its magic, I am ordinary again.

I'm ordinary, except that I have no anus and no rectum, and I will be pooping into a bag on my belly for the rest of my natural life.

Anally Raped by a Jackhammer

I suspect the cancer was here a long time ago. I had ten to twelve bloody stools a day, but my doctor missed the cancer in the fall 2007 colonoscopy.

But when I moved to L.A., leaving my car behind me, I started to ride city buses and trains to work and back. Every bus ride made me feel I was being anally raped by a jackhammer. I didn't realize the problem was not with the bus... until later.