In the Spring of 2017, during the year after I turned 50, I got a note in the mail reminding me to get screened for colon cancer. That was the beginning of a journey I never expected to take.

During my time off work, preparing, having surgery, recovering, I wrote each day: sometimes a journal, sometimes a poem, a song, or the rock opera unicorn project I was working on. When I looked back at the end of the summer, a reoccurring theme emerged in some of those words: how the medicinal science that I had experienced for the first time in my life was so amazing that it almost seemed like magic. I half-remembered a quote from Arthur C Clarke on that theme, but then found an earlier statement by Charles Fort who talked of something,  “… that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic.”

For no particular reason I wrote my story with colon cancer as a cartoon strip.

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Episode 1: Stupid Cancer

The title comes straight from the first page of my notebook that I bought on the same day I got my cancer diagnosis.

I remember leaving the surgeon’s office, stunned to learn that there was a cancer inside me. I was told to go to the office down the hall to book a date for my operation. The office gave me two possible dates, one in just a few days time and another further out. I thought to myself of all the meetings I had planned and the work I was currently responsible for, so I instantly chose the later date. I took the elevator down to the exit and the parking lot, and as I reached the outside, I realised that I had made a huge mistake. I got back in the elevator and returned to the office to confirm the earliest possible date for surgery.

But let me tell you about the events which led to me hearing the news that day…

Episode 2: Computed Tomography

When I failed the initial screening test I had a colonoscopy, which I learned is commonly called ‘a scope’. It’s the long instrument with a camera on the end that goes inside you to look for bad things. My scope didn’t reach far enough so the surgeon sent me for a CT scan to make sure she had looked thoroughly.

A tomograph is a picture of a slice through something. It comes from the Greek word Tomos which means to cut. (I mention this same Greek root in another story “How to Build Your Own Nuclear Reactor: and What Your Friends Will Think” because our word ‘atom’ comes from the same root and means ‘uncuttable’). Anyway a CT machine takes many pictures that are a slice through a person, then puts them all together to make a 3D image. Like a bacon slicer but in reverse. Each image-slice is an x-ray, so to make the whole tomograph picture a patient receives many x-rays, and quite a large dose of radiation.

I wasn’t expecting the CT scan and was still drowsy from my colonoscopy when I woke up in the CT room. I am grateful my surgeon asked for one though. Her thoroughness diagnosed my cancer. My empty bowel was inflated with gas (I will let you imagine how) to help make a good image. That was no fun.

Episode 3: The Second Scope

Seeing a cancer on the CT scan the doctor wanted a second try to reach the tumour, which was in my cecum, the very end of the colon, where it joins to the small intestine. She wanted to remove a piece for tests. So I needed a second scope.

Taking a piece of the disease to use for a purpose unknown to me gave me the thought for another episode about rattling magic charms. In the end the second attempt was not successful, so the doctors would only be able to do tests on my cancer after it had been removed in surgery. I was scheduled for two weeks time, but a vacancy came up and my date was brought forward by a week. I just wanted it out of me as soon as that could be done, though I dreaded the thought of being cut open.

Episode 4: Faecal Occult Blood Ritual

The initial test that I sent off in the mail involves wiping a smear of shit on a little card and sending it (sealed inside double envelopes) for testing where the lab looks for traces of blood. A colon cancer will bleed into the bowel so blood is a signal. This test is called the Fæcal Occult Blood Test. In medical terms ‘occult’ means ‘hidden’, but the name of this test is so evocative. You can replace the word test with so many better words, “Dance”, or “Spell”. I went with “Ritual”.

I was pretty happy with my sketch of Charles Fort, though my son said it looks like Nietzsche. I suppose there was an era where gargantuan moustaches were vogue.

The FOBT is used here in Canada to avoid the need for everyone to get a colonoscopy (only those poor souls who fail the test like me). It is easy to do. If you are over 50, send your shit in the mail. It saved my life and it might save yours.

Episode 5: Knotted Lumpen Mass

This was a poem I wrote some days before surgery. It was difficult thinking about something alien growing inside me.

I didn’t feel the need to add more.

Episode 6: 5 cm Tumour

After the doctor had given me the diagnosis based on the image from the CT scan, I drew it in my notebook, with a ruler to get the size correct. I was an engineer and like most engineers I am visual. Seeing something helps me to understand it. I did wonder how it wasn’t just completely blocking anything moving through my bowel.

My writing became more focused on the operation as the date drew near. Alison helped relieve some of my anxiety with humour. When I saw an asteroid, she saw a cupcake. These most difficult of times can be eased so much with simple affection. I am a lucky man.

Episode 7: The Magic Woman

The actual operation itself was surreal for me. It does not feel real for me to look back at the recent memory now. Prior to sitting in the surgeon’s office and being told The Result that I had colon cancer, I rarely visited the doctor, or took sick leave and had never used long term prescription drugs. My experience of doctors and the whole medical system was very narrow.

I enjoyed writing something with the cancer in the first person. Sometimes in the execution of art nice circumstances arise without a plan. I like how in the second frame I spanned ‘camouflage’ across two lines and the ‘f’ began a new line, which highlights the alliteration with ‘fleshy’. Where the idea of Dorothy came from I don’t know, but I immediately enjoyed the thought.

Episode 8:

As I wrote this episode the words came out like a song.

So outside the constraints of the cartoon’s frame I tried expanding the thoughts into verses and a chorus.

… and recorded it at home.

Episode 9: A Funny Story

In pain from the operation and full of aches where the bubbles of gas inside me, remaining from the keyhole surgery, were moving around, I did not sleep at all for my first night on the ward. As the second night approached I began to feel an overwhelming fear that I would not sleep again, which brought on other feelings of desperation. It was like being a child again, scared in a strange world where I had no agency.

The kindness from that nurse was a miracle that I could not have hoped for. She didn’t judge this scared little boy in a grown man’s body. She just helped where she could. So despite my fears, I slept.

But when I woke, life reminded me that ordinary nonsense will continue. No one gets a break, regardless of circumstance.

Episode 10: Epilogue. Love.

ddd