The original purpose of these "updates" was to allow family and friends who already knew the history of my illness to follow what was happening in my hospice care. Some others have found their way to the website who don't know what came before, so I have decided to post this brief summary.
July 16-17, 2018: I experience some rather severe abdominal pain and decide to get it checked out. I am not unduly concerned, because I have had regular colonoscopies and, at the end of the last one, in October, 2016, had been told to have another in 2021.
July 18, 2018: A CT scan shows that I have Stage 4 colon cancer with numerous metastases to the liver. The colonoscopies had failed me.
July 20, 2018: I am admitted to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.
In the following days, the primary tumor is removed surgically, as a result of which my colon is markedly abbreviated. The surgery goes well and my colon function is not impaired.
All of August and the first half of September are needed to recover well enough from the abdominal surgery for chemotherapy to begin.
September 2018-July 2020: Chemotherapy treatments every other week (except for one very welcome 3 week break to allow for a happy trip to Los Angeles and Tucson, and except for a major hiatus in the spring of 2020 as the corona virus pandemic raged in New York City hospitals). The treatments are nowhere near as hard to take as I had feared, and at times were found in CT scans to be shrinking the tumors.
The last treatment in July has to be interrupted when I have a severe allergic reaction to it.
August 6, 2020: On my 84th birthday I learn that there are no more chemotherapies to use in the attempt to slow the growth of the tumors. I will switch from therapeutic care to palliative care.