Hmm, just popped into this thread for the first time.
Here's to yet another point on the cancer survivor statistic column! More importantly in the near term, I hope the chemo is one, successful, and two, not a terrible experience. Hopefully it can be taken care of in as few treatments as possible.
But to turn this around a bit, damn... that's young. Maybe only 3 years older than myself. That's the shocking thing. I mean, it happens and sadly, what are typically burdens of the older crowd will sometimes strike us when we still naively feel immune to the pains of life.
And with that said, mind if I ask if you had any other symptoms?
I've been letting myself feel a little scared, because I've had about 6 physical therapy sessions as suggested by my doctor, with no success in relieving me of my back discomfort (not sharp pain, but not ignorable either, oh and a numb big toe that so far no one things is connected to my back since its not in the lowest part of the back) . Some things I've stupidly kept to myself, or felt they weren't connected, or even didn't notice a trend or anything. And then again, I can also kind of be a hypochondriac as my mom points out on many occasions, so I might be looking to hard into things that actually have no trend or origin other than my retarded self.
But were stomach aches the only symptom you had? How did your doctor tackle it? The physician here on campus put me through an x-ray and two blood tests (arthritis or something...), and suggested I do physical therapy; one, for the possibility that it might relieve the aching back and solve the problem, and two, for the insurance reason to rule out other things so that ordering an MRI and insurance handling it would be more of a painless process.
I'll be going home soon (college almost out) so I want to see my regular doctor and see if I can get the process going a little faster. The numb toe, my back and neck, and my right eye all kinds of fucked up (dry, blurry (ruled as eye surface issues related to the dryness by campus eye doctor), just plain bothersome, for nearly 2 months, and that came out of the blue)... together all these things confuse and worry me. Likely all unrelated, as the back/neck started a little less than a year ago for the most part, eye came 2 months ago, toe no more than a month ago.
Granted, I don't really think its cancer, but I sure as hell would love to get that ruled out so I can move on to figuring out what it is. Still, other non-cancer, but life-long illnesses do worry me just as much. And all are equally end-game for my upcoming Army career, so, I'm trying to push all this so I can hopefully remove that weight of worry and move on, and fix whatever ailment(s) is/are causing my problems.
Oh and, I do have stomach aches or discomfort, that makes me think bowel habits have been different for the past year. But... that is probably just diet. And, applying a possible condition to the past to make it make more sense, aka more hypochondria. I would definitely hope all of this is hypochondria.
Didn't mean to derail the thread. I guess the main thing I was looking for:
was your stomach aches the only symptom
how did your doctor move to diagnose the problem
And again for the near future: best of luck with the chemo and hope your insides heal up and you can return to normal function. Sounds like it was caught when it was still a localized cancer, so that's already a definitive plus to look at.