The weekend after the colposcopy may have been the longest weekend of my life. Dr. Kelly’s office had promised results Monday or Tuesday, and my mind just ran rampant with doom and gloom for the duration of the weekend.
When you first learn of cancer, you tend to visualize how it’s going to be. At least, that is true for me. In my warped little mind even going in for the pap and the colposcopy, I thought that anything they found, they would be able to just zap out with surgery. Cancer? Oh, that’s easy. You just take it out. That was my mindset.
As someone who’s never had cancer before, and someone who’s life hasn’t very profoundly been touched by cancer with the exception of an Aunt who passed away from it so long ago that I barely remember everything that happened, I had predisposed ideas of what cancer meant to me. Cancer to me was very curable. Words like Chemo and Radiation never occurred to me. Never even crossed my mind that this might not be as cut and dried as I had it in my head that it would be. My worst case scenario included a wham-bam-thankyou-maam hysterectomy, and a week recovery to sleep off the pain.
So, as I sat there over the weekend, in my bed, shut away from my family to try to get a grasp on what Invasive, Squamous Cell Cervical Cancer would mean for me, my life, my children, my husband, my friends, my animals and my future, these words started drifting in and out of my consciousness.
Chemo scares me, probably as much as death. My biggest fear on this planet is leaving my three little boys without a mother. My second biggest fear on this planet is to be so incapacitated with pain and illness that I actually wish for my number one biggest fear. And, let’s be honest here: When’s the last time YOU heard of a wonderful, warm and fuzzy story about the effects of Chemotherapy on a person’s body? Chemo kills the good with the bad. It makes you very, very sick. You lose your hair, you get sick extremely easy, you throw up, you sleep, and you pretty much discard any semblance of a life for 3 or 6 month blocks, or however long you’re in treatment.
So this ironically brought me something to shoot for. If I can get out of this without Chemo, that is something to hope for. I am a goal oriented type person. You show me a finish line, I’ll show you my hind end as I cross it.
The goal from the biopsies was to put a lab proven seal of prognosis on what the Doctor already knew – I have cancer. But, for my cervix, apparently I have quite the smorgasbord of stages across the whole surface. I have everything from CIN1, or Mild Dysplasia to Severe Dysplasia, to CIN3, to Carcinoma in Situ to Invasive cancer, depending on which place you look at the organ.
I began to imagine my cervix as a block of swiss cheese. On a block of swiss cheese, you have some holes that go all the way through, some that barely make a dent and some that go halfway through the block. The holes and dents are cancer. The invasive are the holes that go all the way through and half way through, the dents are carcinoma in situ, and the rest is just hanging out on the surface of the cervix, just waiting for its opportunity to feed on what’s left of healthy tissue below the surface.
I began to think more and more about what the doc meant about a mass in my ovary, and the implications that could have on my life. Afterall, Ovarian Cancer is one of the top 3 women killers of all time. I started comparing my body to the symptoms listed for Ovarian Cancer on the web:
- Swollen abdomen – check (I get the “When are you due?” question all the time. )
- Fatigue – Check
- Loss of Appetite – Check
- Cramps/Abdominal pain – Check
- Ongoing lower back pain – Double check
Those are just a few of the symptoms. I pretty much match all of the symptoms to a T. For more on symptoms visit here: http://health.yahoo.com/cancer-symptoms/ovarian-cancer-symptoms/healthwise–tw9690.html
So, now, while pondering my future, or if I’m even going to have one, while dealing with the awful pain, and after pain of a colposcopy that involved a ton of little end of your pinky sized chunks to be taken out of my cervix, and the cramps, and the ache, and the bleeding, and the ickiness, and then the awful emotional pain that comes with all this, now I’m thinking about how when I do things, I tend to do a really good job. I’m a bit of an overachiever. Why stop at cervical cancer when I could have ovarian cancer too!? Of course, I have no solid fact based reality to base this on, but you hear, “mass inside your ovary” when you meet all symptoms, and I realized that a quick fix isn’t anywhere near reality for me.
So, I start Bottom Lining it. Best case scenario looks like this:
- Colposcopy w/Biopsies
- Cone Procedure to take deeper samples of the cervix
- Laproscopy to biopsy the right ovary
- CT Scans and MRI’s
- Hysterectomy or Radical Hysterectomy to remove the effected organs
Worst Case Scenario:
- All of that, but throw in a few more surgeries, some radiation and some Chemo
And of course the Ultimate worst case scenario:
- It’s spread and I die.
Monday morning, I start blowing up the Doctor’s phone, trying to get answers. I’ve spent the entire weekend essentially coming to terms with the fact that this may actually kill me. Now, I want to know for sure what I’m looking at. The Internet tends to not be a very happy, warm or fuzzy place when you’re looking for information on cancer. The internet is terrifying when you’re trying to figure out what a doctor said to you and what it can mean for your future. I’m sure that the internet is the bane of most doctor’s existence.
So, I call and call, and no one bothers to call me back. I call again, and I talk to a nurse. Still no real information. Next I call again, and she says the doctor is conferring with the oncologist about the biopsy results. They’re deciding whose patient I’m going to be – all oncologist, or gynecologist with oncologist consulting. I hang up, pissed.
Finally at 5pm the nurse calls back and promises that I’ll have information the next day.
Tuesday comes. I’m still in quite a bit of pain from the colposcopy and the biopsies. I had started to come to peace with everything that is happening to me. I started looking at it as a series of tasks to be accomplished instead of steps to the end of my life.
