Cancer

For anyone who happens upon this blog who doesn't actually know me, a big portion of my life right now is devoted to my treatment for ovarian cancer. I had surgery on October 5, 2005 (five days before my 40th birthday), to remove my ovaries (and all my other reproductive parts, as well as my appendix). Miraculously, my cancer was discovered in Stage 1-C, which is unusual, since ovarian cancer has very subtle symptoms and in not usually found until Stage 3 or 4. So while it sucks to have cancer, I still feel blessed that it was caught in such an early stage. I'm currently undergoing chemotherapy.

This experience with cancer has been surreal. Since early October, my life has been immersed in the strange, bizarre world of cancer treatment. It really began before October, when I began getting passed from my primary care doctor, to an ob/gyn, to a gynecologic oncologist, and also undergoing ultrasounds (like the bladder buster pelvic one, and the transvaginal, which is easier, but more embarrassing) and CT scans and blood tests. But those pre-surgery days were just a taste of what was to come. And even though I became increasingly convinced that I did indeed have cancer (I have a family history of the disease), I could still hold out a bit of hope that my gut feeling was wrong.

But on October 5th, my life changed. It was now certain: I had ovarian cancer. I can't say I was shocked, but I certainly was distraught. I wasn't even quite 40. How could this happen? One of my surgeons told me after my surgery that he believed the cancer was at an early stage, and that "we did a very good thing today." And the final pathology report bore out his optimism, with the cancer confined to my ovaries, and no cancer anywhere else. And at least by the time I officially knew it was cancer, the stuff was already out of me.

Nevertheless, my life has changed. First, of course, was the recovery from surgery. I was in the hospital for four days, which felt much longer than that. (At some point, I may write about my hospital experiences.) Then home to recover. With such extensive surgery, I was closed internally in layers. On the outside, I had an eight-inch incision, closed with surgical staples. Who new they looked and functioned just like office staples? I little bigger, and no, the ends don't fold under, but they are metal staples. They kind of freaked me out, and I could hardly wait to have them removed.

Everything was a struggle - getting out of bed in the morning, getting into bed at night, getting up out of my recliner, going to the bathroom, washing up, changing clothes. I haven't napped so much since I was a baby. And while I've heard it said that our abdominal muscles are key to much of our movement, I never really realized how true it is until after my surgery.

Recovery from surgery seemed to take forever, although I did make steady progress. Sometimes my fears about cancer broke through, but during the post-surgical phase of my recovery, I did a pretty good job of what my minister called "compartmentalizing." That is, dealing with the situation at hand and saving the rest for later. And so I got more familiar with daytime television than I ever wanted to (thank goodness for cable), began to walk around the house as much as I could, and rested whenever my body said I had to. So slowly, but surely, my recovery from the surgery progressed as it should.