Chronicles of Convalescing - Part III

Masses. Scary things. So the images taken at the ER six weeks ago showed a pelvic mass... about 13 centimeters. For one night and part of a morning, the Captain and I sat with our private thoughts about, "Wow, cancer. What will that do to my life?" But a visit with Dr. Glenn (my OB/Gyn) later in the morning diffused all those thoughts. It was an endometrial mass... consequence of my endometriosis. Been brewing around in there for years. Now it was taking up too much real estate that didn't belong to it. Time to take it all out. Boom! Spaying was the solution. Not emergent. Not life and death. Pick a date that is convenient and we'll take it all out. That's okay with me. This factory has been closed for 19 years now.

So, the Captain and I compared schedules. We crunched numbers (paycheck and budget numbers). We calculated PTO ("paid time off" not "Parent Teacher Organization" -- those days are over). And we settled on the date. Three weeks hence.

Tumors. Scarier things. The morning after surgery, with my mind still loopy and before the Captain gets there with his unloopy mind to act as interpreter, in comes Dr. Glenn for a visit. Turns out Mabel the Mass was a secondary player in all of this. Hidden behind her, undetected by the CT scan and ultra sound images, was an ovarian tumor. A large one. Dr. Glenn proceeds to give me a narrative of his thoughts when he found it mid-surgery. I'm trying to concentrate but my mind is stuck on the words "unexpected ovarian tumor." He called in Dr. Urie (pathologist) to look at it there in the operating room. He's concerned with the looks of it. Dr. Urie thinks it's "pre-cancerous" but ordered some of it sent to the lab to be sure.

Now we're in wait and see mode. It's Thursday. Long Fourth of July holiday weekend coming up. Lab results won't be back until Tuesday. Quick discussion on the chemo and/or radiation options should the results come back positive. Very cursory. We'll deal with all that later. I'm channeling my best "calm waters, 'let's not get ahead of ourselves', I can handle this." Sure am grateful for all that theater training when I was younger. Inside my head, it's a completely different story. I'm back to "wow, cancer. What will that do to my life?"