I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the years blogging about ovaries.
It began way back in aught nine when I skyped with Kelly Ripa about her support of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and since then I’ve harped on discussed the signs and symptoms, the time I had my genes tested, and Angelina Jolie‘s mind-boggling choice to keep her ovaries in tact.
So you’d think I’d be paying attention to my own. But I wasn’t.
I was due for an annual visit to my OB GYN in July, but making an appointment kept slipping my mind. I conveniently ignored the nagging discomfort in my lower right abdomen, and I chalked up my horrific periods to my advanced age. Eventually I got around to going to the doctor, though, and two weeks ago I went in for my regular exam, as well as for the CA-125 blood test and ovary ultrasound they do each year because of my mom’s ovarian cancer. (As a reminder, there is no effective screening test for ovarian cancer, but these are tests that can detect it when patients are at high risk or have early symptoms.) Last Monday night, I reminded Andy I had a doctor appointment the following morning, and I said to him, “This is the appointment when I go in and she says ‘looks good!’ and I walk right back out. Total waste of time.” He said, “Let’s hope that’s the case,” and then we went to bed.
I was unprepared, though, the following morning when my doctor told me that the ultrasound had shown that there was a cyst of some sort in my ovary, and that my CA-125 level was elevated.
She did her best to assure me that it looked like a complex cyst with ridges and bumps, rather than the smooth variety that would indicate cancer, and said the blood test could mean any number of things. She thought the cyst probably resulted from endometriosis (btw, google chrome is sexist and wants me to change that word to “optometrists”), but given my family history, she wanted to go in and see for sure what was going on. She initially talked about doing so after the first of the year, but fortunately she had a surgery cancellation (which I still don’t get – who cancels surgery? Did something suddenly come up? I’m confused.) the following day.
So, instead of hitting Starbucks and heading back to the office, I found myself listening to instructions for surgery prep and trying not to panic. And, as I do in times of medical emergency, texting Andy, Jenny, and Gina.
But the first thing I did, before I even left the parking lot, was call my sister. Because she gets it.
Obviously, getting the news that there’s something hanging around in my body that shouldn’t be there would be concerning no matter what, but the location of this particular unidentified object resulted in the experience being incredibly emotional for me.
I’m the same age my mom was when she was sick. I have young kids. All the things I have imagined over the years… all the ways in which I have put myself in her shoes in my mind, attempting to understand her story from her perspective – but from a safe and hypothetical distance – suddenly seemed quite real.
I was so worried history would repeat itself.
I am so, so glad I didn’t have to wait three weeks to find out.
The next morning, Andy and I went to the hospital and got the show on the road. I wasn’t nervous about the procedure itself, but the results. When they took me back to get prepped, I couldn’t stop crying. As it turns out, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, there’s a cure for that. The nurse gave me something so I could “relax,” which was almost as lovely as laughing gas at the dentist. Not only was I relaxed, I was also hilarious. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember telling Andy I regretted the decision to decline Jenny’s offer to live-tweet the event.
So, after that and an amazing pep talk from my doctor, it was go time.
The only thing I remember after that was being very confused when they wheeled me into the operating room, because it looked just like the room where Jenny had had Jonah exactly four years before. Same room, same doctor, same everything – except it was a lot less stressful for me when it was Jenny’s abdomen about to be cut open. Funny how that works.
Anyway, moments later (in my mind), I woke up from the best sleep I’d ever had. I asked the nurse if I still had an ovary, and she said yes, which I took to be good news. Looking back on it, I’m not sure the continued presence of my ovary indicated much, but at the time I interpreted it as “nothing too bad is going on in there.” I think I was afraid to actually ask anything more specific.
Then, out of the ether, Andy and my dad appeared, and Andy gave me the good news that they did not find cancer. What they found, as my doc had suspected, was endometriosis. A bunch of it, as a matter of fact. So much that my ovaries, instead of floating freely as God intended, are stuck to my pelvic bone and my uterus. Or something. But wherever they are, they are pretty jacked up and need to come out.
So, it looks like I am going to have a hysterectomy here in a few weeks. I don’t have many details yet, and I’ve been consciously avoiding going down too many Google MD rabbit holes, but I do know one thing.
I am going to blog my way through menopause. You’re welcome.
