Some Sad News

How do I begin? Where do I begin? It’s back. It’s really back. I’m stunned and devastated. How could this happen? It’s not even two years.

The long and short of it is, I woke up the Friday morning after Thanksgiving with severe stomach pain and having trouble breathing. As I was in Palm Desert, I really didn't want to make a big fuss. I waited for 6 hours for the sensation to wear off – hoping that it was just gas in my stomach, only it wasn’t going away. I became seriously concerned that I was having a heart attack.

I finally got to the ER. When I arrived, I had flashbacks to my ER experience in Iowa which made breathing all that more difficult.

The hospital immediately gave me 2 EKGs to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack and then did CT scans to make sure that I didn’t have a blood clot in my lung. Fortunately, they didn’t see any problems in my chest area. However, something was seen on my CT scan that they weren’t expecting – a 10 cm mass in my pelvic region.

I knew that I had a cyst in my pelvis from the last CT scan in June. So, although the doctors seemed very concerned about this mass, I was sure it was just a large complex ovarian cyst. Women get ovarian cysts all the time. This was just a big one. I was sure it was nothing to be concerned about.

On Tuesday, I went down to see Dr. Fisher to show him the CT scan from Eisenhower Hospital. His face clearly told me that he believed that it wasn’t just a cyst. His eyes were distressed as he told me that I needed to come back on Friday to meet with an ob/gyn oncologist. His diagnosis was that this was one of 3 things: 1) it was a huge complex ovarian cyst 2) it was ovarian cancer or 3) it was a recurrence of my colon cancer.

So Friday, I headed down to Stanford to meet with the ob/gyn oncologist-surgeon. She didn’t mince words – it was cancer. She and Dr. Fisher had met and they believed that they had not gotten all of the colon cancer the first time. They strongly believe that the tumor is colon cancer contained in my ovary. Therefore, the most prudent approach is to remove everything and blast the hell out of the area with chemo.

Oh my God. I keep asking myself "What did I do to deserve this? Why am I possibly going to be taken away from my precious girls?" I vascillate between anger and sadness.

So – I have to fight. Again. This time I don’t feel as strong. I’m so damn scared. I was so sure that I was done.

On December 17th I will be going to Stanford Hospital and putting my life in the hands of Dr. Husein. I’ve got to believe that she will save me. I will be getting a full hysterectomy and she will be putting a port directly into my abdomen for chemo. I will remain in the hospital for 4-6 days and then will come home to recover. They will determine during my surgery whether it’s ovarian cancer or colon cancer and then we’ll determine what type of chemo I’ll begin in January. Fortunately, we arranged the surgery so that I could participate in most of the nights of Chanukah and so that I could go to the girls’ holiday recitals and parties.

I will get through this again. It is my duty to be there for my children and damn it, I’m going to be there.

So – I thought that I was done with this blog. That my cancer story had ended. That the only reason that I was going to use the blog was to fundraise for colon cancer research. I was seriously considering never writing on this again. It had such a nice ending. But it’s not over. I’m going back to my battle.

I need you all to be there for me once again. Please please pray for (or send positive thoughts to) me and my family. And send an extra little prayer upstairs on December 17th. I so want Dr. Husein to confirm that the cancer is contained in my ovary and that she’ll get it all out.

And, the most important thing that you can do today is to spend a little extra time hugging your loved ones. Life is so precious.