I was diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell cancer, and I’m not sure if was rectal cancer with impingement of the anal canal, or anal cancer growing into the rectum, or a bit of both. That was 10/21/24. By 11/18/24, I started two rounds of chemo (5-FU and mitomycin), and six weeks of weekday radiation. I was done with treatment 12/31/24 (Happy New Year!). I spiked a fever four radiation treatments before the end, and was hospitalized. I’ll be honest, the pain associated with radiation was so bad, my hospitalization lasted a month, primarily for pain control. Every bowel movement was excruciating for weeks. It’s so much better now, but it was really bad for about a month. I lost about 35 lbs, and struggled to eat. I live alone, so the month of February was rough trying to care for myself.

Fast forward to July; repeat PET scan showed the cancer was gone. I was elated! I still am quite thankful the treatment worked, but I will say, the symptoms of treatment persist; neuropathy, cramping, rectal bleeding, and incontinence. Healing is not linear, things will be better one day, then worse the next. I still think I’m improving slowly, but it is very slow, so a lot of patience is needed. My biggest issue currently is intermittent incontinence, which brought me to this support site. I hope to learn from others’ experience what to expect going forward and what has worked or not worked for others to improve their circumstances relating to this.

Best of luck with everything! I hope some of this insight into my experience helps.