Bloody stool that turned out to be colon cancer

Peter Gathakwa nervously goes through security check; a watchman fiddles with the colostomy bag strapped on his stomach, lifts up his shirt and pokes it, unaware of the shame he would cause him if its contents spill. Uneasily, he says : ‘‘It’s a stoma bag.’’

After poking it a few more times, the security guard lets him pass after an explanation of what a stoma bag is.

The 48-year-old was diagnosed with colon cancer seven years ago.

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In 2009, I started having pains in my legs. I was a clerk at a tea factory and the pain made it hard for me to stand for long. I quit my job and started running a business. The pain continued and something else came up. My stool was coated with blood.

It started with streaks of blood and soon all I could see in the toilet was lots of blood. For two years, I went to different hospitals, I was treated for tapeworms and ulcers.

After visits to many hospitals, one doctor told me to go to Maragwa Hospital. I was given medicine and told to take it for a week. But going to the toilet turned into a nightmare; the blood-stained stool was now accompanied by unbearable pain. I went back to hospital. I was told to do an abdominal scan. It showed an abnormal mass.

The doctor told me to do some blood tests and a colonoscopy—a procedure that checks the lining of the bowel for polyps, inflammation or signs of cancer.

I came to Nairobi to do the tests which showed that I had a cancerous tumour in the large intestines. When I was told I did not shed a tear, not because I am a man, but I did not want fear or depression to cloud my healing journey. I was told I required surgery, but no one told me what exactly it would involve.

All I was told was not to eat foods that would trigger my body to produce intestinal gas. I had the surgery that changed my life. The cancerous part of the colon was cut out and the remaining colon pulled through the stomach to create a stoma (a small hole) that would collect intestinal gas and stool. It was not easy to walk around with that bag.

But little did I know that the journey towards recovery was not as easy as I thought.

The colostomy bags could fill up, leak or drop off anywhere as the glue could not hold it firmly on to the stomach. I decided to stay home. I was even scared to meet my friends by the roadside as the bag could fall off any time. I could not take that kind of humiliation. Already some villagers were saying that I had a plastic stomach.

Nothing can ever prepare a man or a woman for this kind of life. I could feel the stool coming, but had no control to hold it back.

My wife became the breadwinner as I languished in misery while receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment. I went for chemotherapy treatment at Tumu Tumu Hospital for six months. I was lucky the drugs did not take a toll on me, my nails never turned black and my hair did not fall off. After every session of chemo I could go about doing my business.

But after some time I could not just sit and wait to be fed. I am a man, I have to provide for my family. I started talking to people. I was told of this man who had lived for 17 years wearing a colostomy bag. I realised I wasn’t alone. It’s okay to wear a colostomy bag. Now, there is no work I can’t do because I have a stool bag.

I started a taxi business and all I have to do if I am coming to Nairobi—a two-and-a half journey— I skip lunch the previous day to avoid answering the call of nature. The problem is to get a clean toilet to empty the waste.

I cannot stop on the road to do my business. There are no special toilets for people like us. It is hard to change a stoma bag in a public toilet. We need running water—a clean environment to avoid contaminating the small opening in the stomach especially when it hasn’t fully healed.

We also need privacy. Now, I am okay. I don’t experience stomach aches and I eat like any normal person. But I eat a lot of cabbages to ensure that the stool is soft because if it hard, it is difficult to flow into the stoma bag.

Wearing a stoma bag doesn’t make me less of a man. Before I had it, I had two children. Now I have three. It was only the first two months after the surgery that was stressful. I had to rely on my wife to change the bag.

The good thing is that she really supported me. She closed her business to assist me especially immediately after the surgery when I just ate porridge.

Psychologically, I have learnt to live with a stoma. I only realise that I am wearing it when I am changing. I dig, chop wood and even change it in front of my children. What’s so shameful about it?

Men fear to express themselves and keep it secrets. Some with stoma bags fear approaching women. But if a man in a wheelchair can court a woman, marry her and sire children, what makes you different? A stoma bag cannot make you less of a man, you can work and provide for your family. What I fear, however, is gas. It traps itself in and can leak.

Now that I am well, my wish is that the government brings together cancer survivors, use them to create awareness. People in the village don’t know about cancer, not even its symptoms. If we keep quiet, no one will know there is a problem.

Sometimes I fear that my children might get cancer, if not them, their children. Cancer is in my family. My father and mother died of cancer.

But I hope that by the time my children grow up, the government would have come up with ways of doing screening to cut the risk of anyone dying of cancer.

Compiled by Diana Mwango