June 2021. That was the last time I felt well. Our month-long camping holiday was something I’ll never forget ~ 12months later my world will be turned upside down. The adventures experienced on this holiday with my family of 4 and 2 other wonderful families has made my cancer journey easier knowing we did everything we possibly could to make sure we don’t regret a thing.
It was also the time when the most wonderful seed of an idea was planted. Our family had agreed to travel Australia for all of 2023!
22 is my favourite number and for all of 2021 I knew 2022 was going to be my year! I had started the year with some bodily warning signs that things were deteriorating for my usually healthy body. If I have any kind of ailment I go straight to natural remedies and diet. I removed gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol. Things didn’t improve without synthetic medication. I had dental issues leading to ongoing abscess infections and molar removal. Three wisdom teeth were removed in the chair and I thought that was going to be my most traumatic procedure I’d face this year. Haha…
We started the year with all cylinders firing. We had confirmed our dream goals for next year to travel Oz, and this year was going to be a push but adventure awaits. We agreed that we’d prepare our home to AirBnB and during this process there were other warning signs. I remember being up a ladder cleaning the evap vents and experiencing keeling over pain, balancing at the top of the ladder. I put it down to physical aches while I worked three days a week and while preparing the house for AirBnB. My general health was still not yet under control though. Again I put it down to our busy life. I found out in February I was anaemic. That’s the answer to my relentless fatigue. Iron infusions were booked in and all would be well again in no time.
We did it. AirBnB was off and running. Work was going well. We were camping or visiting friends and family while our place was occupied and felt like we had the year planned out. I made it to the end of Term 1 and was hanging for the holidays. The holidays came and went. I treasured this time with my own children. But as soon as the holidays came, they went and we were back to business as usual. I was due for another set of bloods, a follow up with my doctor and be told all is well, that my irons back up due to the infusion and me taking her advice and eating a few meals a week of liver or other high iron meats.
The appointment didn’t go like that. I walked into the room and my concerned GP asked before we’d even sat down, are you feeling ok? I replied how tired I was in general and put it down to our crazy lifestyle. My GP replied, 'I’m surprised you’re standing. The iron we infused is totally gone.' Another iron infusion was booked, I was sent off with a stool test and the words pondering the question from my GP's mouth ‘are you sure bowel cancer isn’t in your family history?’ The answer was no. So I dismissed the idea and kept on with life.
Everyone around me was falling apart or down. Half of the household got Covid, not me, then half of the house got knocked by a horrid virus, not me (so I thought), I was running the house on nothing. No energy, no motivation, nothing. We were still AirBnBing and pushing hard against what the universe was guiding me toward. ‘Stop Stevi. For goodness sake, just stop.’ By week 3 of Term 2 I was cooked like a Sunday roast. I didn’t know why I still had a voice inside me saying stop Stevi. You need to stop. My body was depleted, I was scared of food not knowing what would trigger more symptoms (not just GI related), I’d invested so much money into alternative therapies to try and help to no avail, my weight was dropping rapidly (from 55kg to 49kg) and I just didn’t know what to do. With years of practice and research I have never been so clueless.
My appointment back at the GP was still un-explanatory. My stool sample was squeaky clean, butt!! There was a bacterial infection found and parasites in my stool test. Great!! There’s the answer. I’m feeding dirty little blighters in my gut and the overgrowth of bacteria is making me feel run down…Oh and the iron is gone again! The GP said that yes those things cause discomfort but here’s a referral to a gastroenterologist (GE) for an endoscopy and colonoscopy. My thoughts were, well here it is, conformation of celiac disease, crones, leaky or a plethora of other gut related issues and I’ll find out and deal with it the best I know how…naturally.
Here was my breaking point. After having booked the appointment for the GE I continued to deteriorate. My family continued to get illnesses and I continued to push through to get s#!* done. I was off work. I called in sick day after day hoping there would be improvement in my ability to function at my beloved day job. There was a point when I was almost back! I was frank to my boss and said ‘look I think I’ll be ok but if I don’t have a meeting or yard duty I’ll be sleeping under a desk.’ That day never came. Calling in sick day after day turned into weeks which eventually turned in to calling it off for the rest of the term. With good reason.
My husband went away for an entire week for work, then came home with flu, which meant isolating in our master bedroom (used for occasional guests or if someone in the family is sick). We isolate hard in our family, which we have always done, even prior to Covid or my declining health. I was in desperate need for another sick certificate and as my amazing Integrative Health GPs are a big investment I decided to make an online application to the general GP to save me some money. I was required to go in as it had been over 12 months since I had visited there. Feeling pretty average I drove myself to the doc, gave them a rundown of my past few weeks and said I really just need a sick certificate. They insisted on swabbing me for Covid/Flu. I insisted I knew it was gut related but they persisted and I had the test.
Two days later the nurses called ‘You have influenza A’…Blow me over, I was feeling so super s#!* I didn’t even know I had the flu.
We had darling family members bringing us groceries, making us meals and one of those meals was the most delicious chicken soup you’ve ever tasted. Anyway, I was warming up everyone else bowls of this soup and saving the last little bit for myself all, planning to eat it in my bed as a lunch date. Miss 6 (att) insisted she wanted a glass of veggie juice. She’d never had this juice before but was desperate for a glass. I placed my bowl of soup on the stairs and proceeded to believe (on her word) that she could pour it once I’d open the seal. She handed me the firm plastic bottle to which I broke the seal, put the lid back on and handed it to her with much less pressure in the bottle than when she handed it to me. Meanwhile, what was to follow played through my mind before it actually happened to which I ignored and from my hand to hers there was MISCOMMUNICATION and it slipped out of both our hands, bounced down the stairs and landed right on my bowl of soup. It was splattered everywhere! The carpet was covered, it was projected onto and up the walls, and I collapsed on the stairs replicating the soups efforts. I wailed like a wounded banshee. Like someone close to me had passed away. Like I’d been told I have to leave my family and live in another country. I overreacted but couldn’t help the frustration, of trying my absolute best to keep this house together, collecting firewood in the rain, keeping the animals fed, getting the children to school etc, from bursting out of me like a pent up firecracker.
Now we live on a beautiful bush property with neighbours just within coo-ee and I’m definitely sure they heard this commotion (with many more like this to come) and I’m surprised we didn’t get a police officer knocking on our door. I was very sad about the last bowl of nourishing delicious soup now feeding my carpet and walls. Hubby got out of his iso room, sent me to bed and cleaned up the mess. Darling daughter did NOT drink her juice, and I didn’t leave the bedroom for a number of weeks.
From the soup incident I was finally the one who was in bed. Day after day for a couple of weeks I just stared out of the window. Sometimes reading, sometimes scrolling mindlessly, and sometimes watching a movie but mostly I just cried. I wanted this to be over, I wanted to be well, I wanted to know what the hell was going on. It’s the most helpless I’ve felt in my whole life. I had already invested a lot of money into rect(al)fying my health. But nothing was explaining my ill health…until. My appointment with the gastroenterologist. These specialist appointments are booked and then take a few weeks to get come around and then what awaits is a usually mundane consult either confirming the need for further action or see ya later, your fine. In my case an appointment was booked for another couple of weeks to have the colonoscopy /endoscopy. The ‘prep-pack’ was explained and given to me and I was sent on my merry way to peruse the information.
The preparation for the colonoscopy/endoscopy doesn’t need too much explanation because after all, the whole reason for me sharing my experiences is to encourage others to #checkyourpoo, and quite frankly, we all have it in us to go through discomfort to find answers. All I can say, if you’re going through this procedure, make yourself comfy. Set yourself up with a place to rest and some kind of entertainment at hand, in front of the toilet. Follow the instructions of the bowel prep meticulously. The last thing I wanted was to go through all this effort to go into the procedure, then to come out and be told it was unsuccessful and I’d have to go through all the preparation again. Do it right the first time!!!
With the bowel prep done, I’m one step closer to finding out what is going on in my body. I’d been in touch with the hospital and was told that there are strictly no other people to enter with me. I am to be dropped at the doors and then after a light twilight sedation and time to recover I will be escorted back out the doors to be collected. I went into the rooms, was greeted by lovely nurse who reassured me and took me through to be gowned and prepared. Now of late, I have been a bit difficult to find veins for tests. I met the anaesthetist who was just as kind and reassuring as the nurse, gave me a brief rundown of the light sedation and risks. I explained that I am a bit tricky to find a vein to which he said, ‘hold tight, here we go’. He punctured my hand with such confidence and got the vein straight away. I didn’t quite finish my sentence, ‘you’re good at’…..I was out like a light.
The procedure was over. I’d done it. The prep, going through the angst of an unfamiliar procedure and now to find out possibly what ailment could be knocking me for six. Feeling like I’m floating on cloud nine I get wheeled into a private room and I look up and my husband is standing there waiting for me. My angel. But hang on, ‘You’re not allowed to be in here’ I said. ‘They called me and said I had to come in’ he replied. Hold the phone… Why would they ask him to come in?!
The GE came in what felt like seconds later and I said ‘so did you see anything?’ He looked at me empathetically and said ‘We couldn’t complete the procedure’…But I’d done everything right. How could they not be able to complete it?! The words that followed, I never thought I would hear in my life. ‘I’m very sorry, but we found a large tumour and couldn’t get past it. It’s obstructing your bowel’. My mind was set from the get go. ‘I’m going to smash this!!’ and thank f*ck they found something…Finding nothing would’ve been worse! Through a bit of a sedation fog I asked how long it had been growing for to which the GE replied ‘I’d say 2 years’.
I found out on Wednesday the 15th of June. The days that followed were both filled with relief, motivation and positivity. Now it was time to share my news. ‘How do I tell loved ones that I have cancer?
This story started 18 months ago and is a story I am still very much living day to day. I was diagnosed with Stage 3 bowel cancer. I had major abdominal surgery to remove 22cm of my upper bowel and 50 or so lymph nodes. I was recommended to have 12 rounds of chemotherapy over six months and managed to complete nine rounds. I wanted the best chance to get on top of this so I paired chemotherapy with natural therapies knowing that Mother Nature would have my back.
I have just had my post cancer colonoscopy which confirms my colon is as clean as a whistle. I have been implementing many strategies beyond chemo, both dietary and natural. I follow a clean keto diet, keep physically active, read incessantly about gratitude, health, wellbeing and happiness and am sharing my journey on social media to encourage and advocate others to keep a check on their health, particularly their bowel and gut health and also how to support people around us with cancer. There is still way to much unknown about cancer including how to help those facing it.
My family and I have now relocated to Streaky Bay, a gorgeous remote beach side town in SA and loving every minute of my health, happiness and slowing down.
Follow along with me on Instagram @embracing_clementine
My most important piece of advice…Find a great holistic GP. Someone who values natural health as well as traditional practices. These two practices put together gives our body the best chance of being supported while harbouring cancer, recovering from surgery, going through chemotherapy and healing from it all.