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In July of 2015, I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I had a seven-centimeter tumor in my rectum and was bleeding daily. The doctors wanted to start chemo and radiation immediately, followed by surgery, then more chemo and radiation. This didn’t feel like the best healing path for me, so I refused treatment.
Ever since I started public school, wetting one’s self has been a source of ridicule and shame.
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After a year and half of natural and alternative treatments, I had a sigmoidoscopy and CT scan that revealed that although the tumor was shrinking, it wasn’t going away anytime soon. When one of my Hawaiian elders heard about my predicament she said, “You can save face or save your ass, but not both.” So I surrendered to the reality that I needed to ask for help from the same allopathic doctors whom I had refused treatment from.
On January 12 of 2017, I had abdominoperineal resection surgery. The surgeons removed my anus, rectum, and part of my sigmoid colon. I now have a permanent colostomy bag that hangs from my stomach.
Miraculously, the toxicology report came back completely clean. They removed 14 lymph nodes and none of them showed any signs of cancer. The surgeon was shocked since these results were “better than he could have hoped for.”
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Although I have no regrets about getting the surgery, the transition to my new body has been challenging. Two weeks after the surgery, when I got my catheter and stitches out, I preceded to piss myself over and over—so much that I am forced to wear adult diapers. This combined with having a colostomy bag filled with feces hanging off my body has really challenged my sense of manliness.
Ever since I started public school, wetting one’s self has been a source of ridicule and shame. For example, just recently I told my six-year-old son, “Big boys don’t pee in their beds.” (Ironically, this same son came into my room the other day while I was changing and laughed, “Daddy is wearing diapers!”)
I felt the urge to “man up” and treat others harshly, probably due to the shame of being incontinent.
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Moreover, soiling one’s drawers has been equated with a lack of masculinity. Being “scared shitless” indicated not only weakness and cowardice, but also a lack of manliness. When I was a surf- and snowboard addict, we used to have a saying when confronted with big waves or gnarly jumps or cornices—“Tighten your sphincter.” So you can imagine how I was feeling about myself being 51 years old with no sphincter control and wearing a diaper.
To make matters worse, due to the sutures, I am unable to sit without pain for extended periods of time, so I am not able to do any “work,” even on the computer. This temporary disability threatened my already fragile sense of worth as a man who can contribute financially to my family. All things combined, I wasn’t feeling like much of a man.
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Unfortunately, I caught myself overcompensating for this masculine insecurity by arguing with my wife, yelling at my sons when they were “crying like babies,” and overtaxing my body—taking my sons to their sports events and working around the house when I should have been laying in bed recuperating. I felt the urge to “man up” and treat others harshly, probably due to the shame of being incontinent.
Thank God for my men’s group that helped me see that being a good man has very little to do with “keeping my shit together” and everything to do with honoring and nurturing the relationships with my wife, my children, my family, and my friends. I feel so much better about this transition knowing that the best way for me to be a man is to love my wife, my children, and myself in a compassionate and forgiving way.
This new body of mine has taught me not to be so anal and relax my rigid views of masculinity. To me, being a real man has nothing to do with physical traits or prowess; a real man is defined by his ability to keep an open heart to whatever comes his way.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
Thanks for this post my uncle was diagnosed with colon cancer when he was 55. He had consulted to Colorectal Surgeons Sydney. Finally he had a colonoscopy screening and cancer was diagnosed.
Read more http://colorectal-surgeon.com.au/colonoscopy/
You’re alive, and your family doesn’t have to go on without you. The rest will come with time.
I can totally understand your reaction to it all. It’s a huge change. The physical part while big is not insurmountable. People lose their penises to cancer too. They’d maybe be better off if they could make a vagina out of it. I don’t know. Who really cares. You do what you need to do. But having your physical, mental and emotional challenges to come together at the same time would be very hard indeed. But it sounds like you’re handling it quite well. I applaud you for that.
There is a lesson here: Open your heart to Western medicine *before* you end up shitting in a plastic bag.