It Started Small

It started as such a small thing.

Every now and then, food would get a little stuck where my esophagus meets my stomach. I’ve had a hiatal hernia most of my life—it was repaired during surgery seven years ago—so I figured it was just a flare-up. I’d also been dealing with dizzy spells pretty regularly over the last few months. At the beginning of June, I went to my primary care doctor and told him everything: the dizziness, the stomach issues, and how the two seemed to show up together.

He ordered a bunch of blood tests, told me to start taking Prilosec twice a day instead of once, and—randomly—ordered an ultrasound of the carotid arteries in my neck. If you’re not familiar with Kaiser Permanente (KP), everything’s under one roof: doctors, specialists, pharmacy, hospital, urgent care, mental health. It’s all part of the same system. And for us, it had worked great… until now.

With KP, test results show up in the app almost immediately. I watched them roll in—one after another—each one marked “normal.” Every single time, my doctor just pasted the same note: “Hemoglobin slightly low, take iron.” He copy-pasted it on every test—even ones that didn’t measure hemoglobin. I never got a call, never got a message. Still haven’t heard from him to this day.

Meanwhile, my swallowing issues kept getting worse. Some days, food wouldn’t go down at all. I’d have to throw it back up. Eventually, I was living on protein shakes and pudding. That’s when I hit my breaking point and switched primary care doctors.

Six weeks after that original appointment, I met with the new doc. I explained what was going on. His face changed immediately—he was visibly concerned. He ordered a full panel of tests and told me he was surprised the previous doctor hadn’t done so already. He scheduled an endoscopy (camera down the throat) and a colonoscopy (camera up the other end).

During the endoscopy, they found a swollen area and took several biopsies. Afterward, the gastroenterologist explained that I had Barrett’s Esophagus. Basically, years of acid reflux had changed the lining of my esophagus. That’s what was causing the swallowing issues. He said they’d send the biopsies to the lab and I should expect results in a couple of days.

That Saturday morning, Zanne and Katie were out visiting a local botanical garden and picking up wax from one of my candle suppliers. While they were gone, the phone rang.

It was the GI doc. The biopsy results were back.

The Big C. Esophageal Cancer.

At first, it didn’t hit me how serious that was. I figured—okay, a few cancer cells, we’ll blast ‘em out, and I’ll move on. But thinking back, I should’ve known by the weight in his voice. This wasn’t just a few rogue cells. This was something deeper. Something insidious.

And I keep wondering—what if my first doctor had taken this seriously? What if he’d actually investigated instead of brushing me off? Could we have caught it earlier?

I’ll never know.

What I do know is that Esophageal Cancer is a motherfucker. It grows fast, and by the time symptoms show up, it’s usually already spread.

Stay tuned—next, I’ll walk through the battery of tests I went through to get my official diagnosis and figure out what stage we’re dealing with.