Day 258 and Day 8 and Day 1

April 11, 2023

I am eight days out of surgery. The smell of rose essential oil emanating from the under eye revitalizing patches I am wearing is overwhelming my senses. The patches were a gift from a dear colleague and friend who I miss tremendously. I miss a lot today. I am eight days into a three month leave of absence from work and I feel lonely. I also feel thankful to be alive, thankful to be upright and moving around considering twelve inches of my rectum and colon were removed and I now have a stoma dumping light brown fluid into a pouch adhered to my belly. That story is probably best saved for another post, though.

Allow me to introduce myself, I am Meredith Rose Foster. I am a 42 year old married, professional woman. My husband of twelve years, David, is my ride or die. We opted not to have children and instead have our Great Dane mix, George, two cats, Paxton and Penelope, and a rescue parakeet, Parker.

I have spent my career in aesthetic medicine, first as a licensed esthetician for 13 years and for the last ten in sales. Over the last four years, I have been struggling with understanding my purpose in life; it was an empty and uneasy, anxiety-laced restlessness that stewed inside me. Clarity around this feeling eluded me. and what I did not realize is that alongside this growing desire for purpose, something else was growing as well.

In the early part of 2021, I noticed speckles of blood on toilet tissue. Intermittent and light at best, I wasn’t too worried. I figured I would mention it at my next physical, which I did. Yes, a small hemorrhoid was present and I was told that if it didn’t clear in a few months to reach back out. Which is exactly what I did. Blood now was present with my stools, not every time, but more often than not. And there was blood emptying from my rectum after I had vaginal intercourse with my husband. What the hell. In early 2022, I had a rectal examination by a colon and rectal surgery specialist, in which I was told that everything looked good, time to see the gastroenterologist.

It didn’t help that while these symptoms were worsening, so were my menstrual cycles. Horrendous cramps, stifling headaches, a raw stomach, and bleeding so heavy that I once had an accident in a customer’s office. Reporting these symptoms to my practitioner had everyone thinking that my cycles were changing. I was 40 going on 41 after all. Then came the unbearable spasms of my diaphragm. Lasting for hours and making it difficult to breathe, the only comfortable position was standing up and walking around. This led to an urgent care visit where no one was able to help but finally prompted the order for full abdominal ultrasounds. Everything was clear. Finally an ultrasound of my uterus showed a massive polyp, which was the culprit for many of my symptoms.

April of 2022 was host to a hysteroscopy. My husband and I hoped this would be the end of the road. After the procedure, my body needed a break, so I rescheduled the colonoscopy I had been waiting months for, to a few months further out. My symptoms temporarily seemed better, but then the rectal bleeding came back with a vengeance: blood and mucus, gas with discharge, a bloated belly.

July 28th, 2022 was the day we discovered a malignant tumor in my rectum. The returning pathology and MRI and CT scans would confirm it to be stage three rectal cancer. It was ten days before my 42nd birthday. It has been 258 days since then.

Today is the first day of my blog, This blog will catalog my journey, in hindsight and in real time. Today, I believe my cancer is gone. Any last remnants of tumor have hopefully been removed by this surgery. And oddly enough, some of that restlessness for purpose has been removed too. It’s not the best thing to say to a cancer patient, “everything happens or a reason,” or “God never gives us more than we can handle,” but I do feel like both of these cliche lines are true for me. I do believe there is a reason this happened to me and I am working to get more clarity on that. In the meantime, I want this blog to be a space where other women with colorectal cancer can turn to feel less alone, to learn, and to share. I want to create a sense of community. We should not be ashamed of our diagnosis, or talking about the symptoms, or how this makes us feel. We deserve a space and for our voices to be heard. The only people who truly know this dark path is us. Let’s shine more light on it.