Hemorrhoids and Hernias

Reading the BBC and Eurocare reports earlier in the week informed me that Colorectal (colon = large intestine, rectum = just before your anus) Cancer is one of the commoner cancers so I looked it up on Wikipedia … and I have two of the classic symptoms methinks. Blood when you defecate and reduced size of stools. Also I have pain in my lower right abdomen, around where your appendix and caecum are, near the end of the colon. I have been ignoring these for months.

Oh fuck! Confused thoughts. I have to provide for Kezia, Jaime and Nanda. If it is cancer, I have to go back to the U.K. If I have cancer and leave here, I will lose my job. If I have cancer and go back to the U.K., how can I work and support them.

So I went to my workplace doc on Thursday morning who massaged my abdomen … and said

a) nah … you’d feel pain here.

b) I’ll send you to Cuban surgeon N. at the hospital for a rectal examination and if he finds nothing in your rectum, then we’ll think about a colonoscopy (sticking a tube all the way round the convoluted turns of your colon) when we have the results.

Valium, laxative and no food overnight and I am ready to have my rectum examined. On the couch. N. says to get into a “cat position” i.e. on my knees and elbows with my arse in the air! How undignified when it is not sexual! But, at least, having been there, it is not novel!

A hemorrhoid.

He turns me over and says cough – at the moment my lungs are most empty he massages my abdomen. A small hernia!

To treat my Pile – 90 suppositories!

To treat my Hernia – not yet, it is too small.

I am grateful.