Happy Birthday to Me!

I have a good Momma.  She came up to Smithfield 2 weekends in a row to visit us.  She came up for Jason's birthday and stayed to hear me speak in church.  Then, the next weekend was my birthday and she came up again for that.  She made a yummy dinner and a cake for me...then did all the dishes before she left.  She is the best!

The kids gave me a pair of underwear in a can.  They are one size fits all and the kids thought they were pretty funny.

Things sort of got crazy after my birthday.  I had a colonoscopy scheduled for a few days after.  I had lots of polyps in a colonoscopy last year, so I was just going back in this year to see if there were any there again.  Unfortunately, there were more than the year before and this time they were pretty bad.  I had most of them removed and then ended up in the hospital for a few days because I had some bleeding.  It was all quite dramatic and Allie was a wreck, worried about me.  It all turned out okay and I was home and back to normal.  The biopsy came back and was on the border of turning into cancer, so the recommendation was to remove most of my colon.  After visiting with the surgeon, I have decided to have a subtotal colectomy.  It isn't an entire colectomy, and should leave things relatively normal (I won't have a bag), but remove the area that was leaving me at a huge risk of colon cancer.
I have the surgery scheduled for later on this week.
It has been completely out of the blue for me, and quite a shock, but I am so grateful.  The GI doc told me that if I hadn't come in last year to have the polyps removed, I'd be dead right now.  He even said if I had waited even a few more months this year, it would be full blown cancer.  And I would have had no idea!  Colon cancer really is a silent killer because I had no indication that anything was wrong.  The only reason I had a colonoscopy in the first place was because my brother had a few polyps at 36 and they suggested that his siblings go in.  He saved my bacon for sure.
I have met with a geneticist and started the process of finding out why I have such a crazy colon at my age.  I am hoping we can get some answers, so we can get our kids checked out if we need to.  I'm not sure there are many 4 year old kids who can use the word "colonoscopy" correctly in a sentence, but Nate is one.  Just the other night, as he was drifting off to sleep, he said "Mom, I will still love you the same, even after your colonoscopy and your surgery.  I will still love you."   What a good boy.
I have become a cheerleader for colonoscopies and I tell everyone I know that has any reason to go, to go.  It totally sucks the night before, but it's worth it if it can save your life.  I am so grateful that things were set in motion to let me know about my lame colon.  I have been trying to scramble to have everything ready as I go in for surgery.  I think it will sort of be like recovering from a c-section, except I won't be getting anything so cool as a baby from it.  Maybe I'll have all sorts of time on my hands and I can catch up on the blog.  I have so many things to write about.
This is all such a personal matter to be throwing out on my blog, but it is a pretty major part of my life right now.  Besides, maybe one of you reading this will realize that you should probably get a colonoscopy.  Or, maybe you can just read this and send up prayers of thanks with me that I get to hang around a little longer.  Either way, it is what it is.  Life is good and my God is a God of miracles.  I have seen them and I am so grateful.