My Cancer Story~ part 1

I had problems with my menses ever since my first one....which wasn't until my sophomore year in high school!

When I was in high school I had one that never stopped.......at least not until I passed out and had an ambulance ride to the hospital. I had lost 50% of my blood and had IV's in both arms. The hospital said if I had waited two more hours I wouldn't be alive...I was turning 16 years old in just a few days.....

Not what every girl dreams of when she thinks "Sweet 16". But that's a whole other story.

So when I started having very heavy and very often bleeding, so much so that I had no energy I didn't think too much of it.... my menses had never been normal ....at least I didn't WANT to think much of it... but down deep I knew I better go in. After trying many different things with my doctor nothing seemed to be helping.


My mother and my little sister went with me to my Doctor appointment to decide what we needed to do. Now my little sister was VERY pregnant with her first child (Yea!!) and I couldn't wait to be right there in that delivery room with her while my precious nephew was born! I had dreamed of this day! Watching my only sibling become a momma.....


When I spoke with my doctor he let me know that I was hemorrhaging each month and that I needed to have a hysterectomy and it needed to be very soon. I told him my sister was going to have a baby and I wanted to wait. .....Lets just say the look on his face wasn't one of approval.


He gave me an option of a DNC now with a hysterectomy to follow in a month.... That didn't sound fun to me....... but he would not back down from the hysterectomy and really strongly advised I do it asap.


After much anguish (and tears) over possibly not being 100% when it came time for my nephew to be born, I chose to go ahead with they hysterectomy.


He said my Uterus was up to high to do the hysterectomy vaginally, my uterus was too large to do the surgery laparoscopically so it would need to be done through the traditional abdominal incision...


I told him I was afraid to have the surgery. I told him my grandmother passed away of cancer, my mom had brain tumor and I was afraid of what he would find. If you've been reading my blog long you know I have diarrhea of the mouth moments when I'm nervous, embarrassed or well.......often.... this was definitely one of those times.

He said "Now honey, calm down, I do these all the time. There is always the possibility but we have no reason to think we will find anything. You have nothing to worry about ,you will be just fine." not knowing that later he would have to eat those words.......

When I came back to the waiting room with the options and shared them with my mom and big ol' prego sister they both agreed and my sister flat out insisted that I do the hysterectomy ASAP. They felt that was more important than being 100% at my nephews birth and hopefully I would recover quickly and still be able to be in the birthing room.


So I scheduled it.

The whole famdamily showed up for the surgery (that's how we do things, and it usually includes lunch or dinner at a restaurant that is known to the entire family as where we eat when someone is in the hospital........yes, even then it is all about the food....just kidding......well, kind of) and everything with the surgery seemed to go well.

I was in a lot of pain after the surgery and I'm still not sure why. I've had surgeries before and I'm typically a pretty tough cookie. This one knocked my socks off for some reason.

My Hunk sat there next to my bed and would push my pain button for me (when the time would allow) so I could continue to try sleep..... now I know you aren't supposed to do this and the nurses would have flipped a lid......but I was never so grateful....and they couldn't take listening to me moan in pain....

I slept that night and the next day the nurses came in and asked that I get up and walk. I tried to get up and it was awful........ I hurt sooo bad....she got a tad bit snippety with me and explained I had to get up. I was trying to let her know how much pain I was in, that it didn't seem like I should have that much pain....I understood the importance of getting up, I wasn't arguing that point at all, I just didn't understand why the pain was so strong...

Well, though most nurses I have encountered have been wonderful ....lets just say she wasn't one of them....... Now she doesn't know me, so she may think I'm just a wimp, I tried to explain I have high pain tolerance normally.... I'm not convinced she gave a rip...in fact I'm quite sure she did NOT..

Lets just say, I'm usually very nice to all hospital staff and very appreciative for what they do........as for me and the "nurse Nazi"......lets just say we didn't part as friends.......

My doctor came in that evening to let me know that surgery went well. He wasn't sure why I was having so much pain but said everything looked good. My uterus was very large (as we knew before surgery) and after surgery it was sent in for a routine biopsy.... but he felt overall everything went great... He told me to have a great night and he left.

I let out a Sighhhhhhhhhhh.... What a relief, everything went good, I'm not sure why there is so much pain but at least they didn't see any cancer..... I was so afraid they would.

In fact I was once of these people who had already had in their mind that I would either die from a car accident or cancer. I know I got these ideas because in high school one of my best friends was killed by a drunk driver and as I mentioned my grandmother had cancer (and passed away when I was only 1 year old) and my mother had a brain tumor when I was about 5 years old, thankfully her surgery to remove it was successful and it has never returned.

But I also for some reason had this sense of wonder about how I had such a great life. I never understood why, for some reason I always felt that I didn't deserve to have such a blessed life.

Then one day I was driving home from dropping my Rugrats off to school and I was thinking how wonderful my life is, how lucky I am to have everything we have and then came the thought of me not deserving to have so much.....and BLAM this feeling overtook me that said "YES YOU DO, WHY DON'T YOU?" And I answered (myself..of course...lol) "You are right! Why not me? Why don't I? I haven't done anything wrong to not deserve it, why don't I deserve it."

That is a day that sticks out in my mind to this day. It was one of the moments that Dr. Phil and Oprah talk about, a defining moment in our lives. I had been overweight (shock and awe moment) and after that day I started dropping weight without even trying. I wasn't stuffing food in my pie hole when I wasn't hungry anymore, I started walking with my Hunk each night after dinner.... I was feeling alive and worthy of all the joys I had in my life...... I'm telling you about this day because it's important in your being able to understand my reaction when I got "the news".....

After this news from the doctor that everything went well my Hunk and I talked and decided that he really needed to get back to work the next day. There were some important job walks for jobs we really would like to get.... I was going to be fine, everything was looking good.....so instead of coming to the hospital that next day, he went to work.

My mom, however, had stayed the night in the hospital with me. She said she wanted to stay with me to help me during the night......But......I think she was afraid my favorite nurse would be on staff that night and she didn't want to get a call in the middle of the night from the hospital saying that her daughter attacked a nurse on duty and needed to be picked up.

Whatever the reason I was glad she was there...

The next morning the Doctor came in and walked to the sofa in my room. He sat down, looked up and said "Honey, I just received the strangest news"........

I thought he was going to tell me a story about another patient of his.........or maybe that he had saved a bunch of money by switching his insurance to Geico...

I could have never prepared myself for what he said next....

To be continued....



Ciao Bellas~