We are pleased to welcome Christine and Ricardo as bloggers to our jpouch.net family. Ricardo is our resident FAP jpoucher, and Christine is his amazing wife. Together they documented his story, surgeries and experiences. They will be sharing their complete story with us, but in the meantime a brief introduction is in order. Here’s a warm welcome!

The Chavez Family November 2008

It was the middle of December when my husband went to his yearly physical fitness check up, which is required for his job. This time, however, he actually mentioned his family history [editor's note: of colon disease? cancer? IBD?] and followed through with getting his colonoscopy done. The colonoscopy was scheduled in the beginning of January and from that day on we have been living with a different awareness. Ricardo went in for his colonoscopy and came out 2 hours later — still groggy mind you — I had not talked to anyone, I was waiting to be called back, instead he came out. I thought “everything went well,” so I asked him “how did it go?” He responded, “Not so good, they need to remove my colon, otherwise I will die.” I was shocked, although we knew this was a possibility. We were praying he didn’t have it [editor's note: what?] and after talking he would say “Babe, I’m fine I don’t have no problems going to the bathrooms and I have no symptoms.”  So we thought no he would be fine.  Unfortunately we were wrong, it so happened that he had hundreds of polyps, of which a couple needed to be biopsied because they were large in size; there were too many to remove and if he didn’t remove his colon he would [end up] like his father [and] get colon cancer, and [probably] have a slim chance of surviving it. That [... drive] home [from the doctor's / hospital] was hell. I was so hurt, [this bad news] was something I had been dreading to hear and he was I think so drugged up he wasn’t all there yet, he was acting like nothing [was wrong]. I think also [Ricardo, my husband] was thinking “o[h] well, I['ll] have to do what [needs to be done], nothing more to talk about. [These sentiments of acceptance are] [...] like my husband, so I dropped him off at home and went to pick up our son. Once he shut the car door I drove away breaking down [in tears], I couldn’t even catch my breath, this was life changing and at the time I wasn’t thinking for the best. Days past and we overcame the “finding out phase” and next was the Doctor appointment for basically confirmation of what they found and to discuss our options.  His sister who also has FAP and myself and Ricardo went to the appointment, the Doctor explained how the surgery was going to take place and that it should be done asap.

*check back soon for rest of Ricardo’s story

These posts might also help out:

• February 15, 2010 -- I’m so over this colon. (13)
• February 10, 2010 -- Making Ostomys HOT! (2)
• February 2, 2010 -- It’s a girl! (7)
• June 6, 2009 -- Let’s just call it … IBD (8)