.... In the fall of 2007, I had finally left the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) world and had started working part time taking care of developmentally disabled adults and going to school full time. I started getting tired very easily and then developed constipation. After suffering through it for a month or so, I finally went to my doctor, who started me on some laxatives and ordered blood tests.

.... When the results of my first blood test came back, I was told I was anemic, which explained the fatigue, but raised many more questions, since I was much too young to have anemia. I went for more blood tests. I felt so tired and nauseated; I called off sick to work on the 26th of November.

.... At 2am the morning of the 27th, I woke up with severe pain in my abdomen. I suffered through it through the night and told my mother about it that morning around 8am. There was no hesitation in her voice. She told me to get in the car and she would take me to the hospital. I gave a half-hearted protest, but it wasn't in me. I weakly walked out to the car and tried to find the position that hurt the least. There wasn't much difference in any of the ones I tried, but some were worse than others.

.... At the hospital, I went to check in as Mom parked the car. They took my information and asked me to have a seat. I sat there for a few minutes before my name was called. I went to the triage nurse and sat down. She asked why I was there and started taking my vital signs. From my days in EMS, there are a few things that I know to be absolute. One of those is that vital signs never, ever lie. If you're in pain, your heart races and your blood pressure is elevated. I looked at the monitor on the desk and then at the nurse. I saw right there that she didn't believe me. I wouldn't have believed myself if I didn't know what I was going through. My vitals signs couldn't have been more perfect if I had tried.

.... For some reason, they took me right back and got me on a gurney. I explained to the nurse what was going on and what I had been going through the previous month. After a quick exam, he gave me a quick rectal exam and said "something didn't feel right." That's when I became worried. Not overly so, but worried enough to start making nervous jokes. They told me they were going to take some flat plate x-rays of my abdomen and asked if I wanted some pain killers to take the edge off.

.... They gave me 5mg of morphine and took me to the x-ray. I was ok until I came back to my room in the ER. I started hurting so bad that I couldn't breathe. I thrashed around on the gurney, unable to stand the pain. The nurse came in and gave me the rest of the morphine, another 10mg. It was right about that time that I faded off into blackness.

.... When I woke up, they had me in the ultrasound room and were looking in the general area of my gallbladder and liver. When I got back to my room, the nurse told me that they had found some spots on my liver and the blood draws they had taken earlier showed that I had an infection of some kind. She told me I had to drink some contrast liquid for a CT scan and they should know more after that.

.... I spent the next hour or so more or less asleep, until the tech came to get me for the CT scan. When I came back, I fell back asleep. It was hard keeping track of time there. I couldn't see the clock, and I kept falling in and out of sleep. I had no idea how long I was in there and no idea what time it was. Finally, the doctor came in to tell me the findings. She told me that they found some cancerous tumors in my colon and my liver. I was to be admitted for a few days to do some tests. In the meantime, they would take me to a room and a doctor would see me there.

.... It seemed like everyone came to see me that night. There were so many of us that they moved me to a private room and let everyone stay as late as they wanted. Every couple of hours, my nurse came in to give me another shot of morphine. Everything else is kind of hazy. I talked to my friend, Tim, for a while when everyone else had gone, but it wasn't too long before the morphine caught up with me and I told Tim to go on home since I was almost asleep.

.... The next afternoon, I met Dr. Ebrahemi, my oncologist, for the first time. He wasn't exactly the most positive fellow I had met during the last two days, for good reason. He told me I had Stage IV colon cancer that had metastasized (meaning that it had spread) to my liver and that the tests that I was undergoing were to see if it had spread beyond my liver. Then he told me the bad news. He gave me a 2-5 year prognosis. I looked him in the eye and asked him what it was going to take to beat it.

.... He looked at me in surprise and said that I must have misunderstood him, that there is no cure. I told him I understood him perfectly, but there was no way in hell I was going to be done in by my own body and that I was going to beat it. He looked at me and said "Ok, let's see what we can do." Since that day, he hasn't said anything that he doubted my ability to beat this, and his entire office has been 100% supportive of me. I'll be around a while yet. Just watch.