Precancer: Waiting MIGHT kill you

By Hank Kula

It doesn’t get any more intimate than having a doctor root around inside your colon.

Except maybe cutting it out. And taking your appendix with it.

This isn’t a cancer story. It’s a PRECANCER story. Not as in before, during, or after, but something all by itself, worthy of your attention, and not something to mess with.

Precancer is a thing – something you should know about. Nobody really talks much about it – not like they do cancer. Knowing about it can save your life down the road. Like 10 years down the road. When doctors talk preventative medicine and precancer, they’re serious.

Painfully.

Truth is, if I could get through colorectal surgical treatment for precancer, anyone can. I’m no tough guy. At 57, a retired cop and former journalist, I work part-time for a tech company, and as the occasional police instructor. I was an average cop at best. In almost 27 years in law enforcement I saw my share of serious injury and death. But none of it prepared me for precancer.

In 2015 I had my first colonoscopy at my step-daughter’s urging. For four years I ignored the recommendation to have it done at age 50 (the typical age at which insurance covers it). When she found out both my wife and I had procrastinated, she asked for colonoscopies for Christmas.

So, on my birthday, I took a sick day and submitted. Okay, I admit I put off the procedure because I was uncomfortable with, well, having someone go “up there.” Quick, painless, and done at Highland Hospital instead of in-office because of my cardiac history … I didn’t remember much of it – just enough anesthesia to numb me. The result? A few polyps removed and the recommendation I come back in three years for another.

That’s when it got interesting. Three years and a second colonoscopy later, my gastroenterologist, Dr. Paul S. Dziwis, M.D., likely saved my life.

This time (November 2018) my procedure was done in-office at the Gastroenterology Group of Rochester. While in recovery I received the news – I had precancerous polyps – one of which perforated my colon and decided to wrap itself around my appendix. A section of my colon containing “tubular adenomas” had to come out, my appendix as well, and its unwelcome attachment – a “tubulovillous adenoma.”

Latin aside, in plain language, Dr. Dziwis advised while the polyps had to come out, there wasn’t much urgency, but “sooner than later” was advisable. Coincidently, we have an extended family member (also a retired police officer) whose doctors didn’t catch his colorectal cancer in time. At this point he’s undergone four surgeries and four rounds of chemo in his stage four cancer battle.

We opted for sooner and immediately scheduled a visit with a colorectal surgeon, Dr. Rabih Salloum, M.D. at The University of Rochester Medical Center’s Wilmot Cancer Institute.

Since the first colonoscopy, I had retired from police work. In the year since, life was all about reducing stress, eliminating toxic people from my life, starting a part-time job, and repairing the damage my career and I had done to my marriage. That said, in my head and heart, there was truly little stress accompanying a little surgery.

My brave wife, a melanoma survivor, laughed post-op, that I really didn’t have a clue what I was in for.

Like all wives of course, she was right, ergo, the purpose for part two of this story  – colorectal surgery isn’t exactly “little,” and like Dr. Dziwis, my surgeon (and the staff at the Colorectal Surgery Division of UR Medical Center) are heroes I want you to know about.