Greetings family, friends and future new friends.......

Welcome to my Underwear Affair Personal Page! As you can see, I joined Alberta Cancer Foundation Underwear Affair- a 10K run / 5K walk to uncover cures for cancers below the waist. Its not only fun, but it fights prostate, colon, testicular, and ovarian cancer, among others. I'll be just one of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Edmonton this summer in the biggest Affair this town has ever seen!

My story started Oct 18, 2011. I had known for more than a year that something was wrong. Even after the bleeding started I made every excuse in the book, including hemeroids. I finally had my kids take me to the Royal Alex Emerg as the pain now was unbearable. No amount of T3's took away the pain. Upon a slightly uncomfortable exam it was determined I needed to undergo a colonoscopy. I was then rushed to surgery to perform an emergancy colostomy. The prognosis was I had stage 3 colon cancer and the tumor was quite large. I started chemo and radiation mid November to the first week of January 2012. March 2 was my major surgery day. My cancerous tumor was removed and Dr Plewes had to build me a new inner bum. I now had an ileostomy. The operation went well but two days later my right lower stomach started to harden and was hot to the touch. I knew what incision pain was by now and this kept getting worse. No matter what pain killer they gave me the pain increased. After one painful ultrasound and a CT scan it was determined I had an infection. The first antibiotic wasn't strong enough and after two more days they switched me to the second strongest antibiotic they can give me. The pain in my right side increased day by day unitil I pleaded with one of the doctors to believe me. The only way of getting the infection out was to remove an area of surgical staples from my incision so they could push the infection out. The smell was so bad that it was smelt getting off the new set of elevators. Thankfully my roomie had no sense of smell, most vistors refused to come in our room for the those first few days. To make a long story shorter I left the Royal Alex March 14th ... day 13. If it had not been for the most wonderful group of nurses in Ward 34 I might still be in there. My open wound will take another 4 weeks to heal. I have the best group of Home Care Nurses come in twice a day to clean my open wound and change my dressings. Cleanup chemo is to begin after that. The final step is my final surgery to reverse the ileostomy. I can't express in words how fortunate I am to have a support group as fine as the one I have. My link to the outside world was and still is Facebook. I remain positive , but during the dark moments I feed off those texts and messages. I bet I checked a hundred times every day and I got excited everytime there was a message or comment. This event is a way for me to say thanks a million. So many people have been involved in this journey. The end is in sight and I plan on returning to work next year. Please be generous and lets raise an insane amount of money. Thanks again. See you all at the walk June 16th.


What can you do about it? You can donate to me! Don't be shy - its about giving these devastating cancers some exposure and shedding some light on their cures. So please help me in my effort to raise money for care and research for cancers "down there!"