Watch Out, Usain Bolt

I walked two laps around Fashion Square today. Oh, all right, with a wee rest in between. But still.

Home

We arrived home from the hospital a bit ago. Surgery went as well as could be expected. They didn’t have to take my aortic lymph nodes, and the flash freeze of my now-departed pelvic lymph nodes showed no cancer. The full pathology report will come back next week, but we have every reason to be optimistic that they got it early and got it all.

For now I’m sore and swollen and alternating between resting and walking (although I’m not allowed any more strenuous activity than that for a few weeks). But I’m kind of amazed that you can have a hysterectomy and be home 30 hours later, and I’m very glad that I get to spend tonight in my own bed.

More news as we have it.

Waiting

We arrived at the hospital at 5:30am as instructed, and are currently in the surgery waiting room. They won’t take me to be prepped until about 6am. I’m finaly feeling a bit nervous – not so much for the surgey itself, bit for what comes immediately after. My stomach is rumbling, an astounding feat considering Ive had no solid food since dinner on Saturday.

Ben and Tom are with me. Tom is on his iPod Touch; I’m tapping this out on the WordPress app on my iPhone; Ben is doing email on his laptop. The family that surfs together…

Hope to be back online in 8 hours or so.

12 hours, my ass

With apologies for the scatological pun…

As a requirement of my surgery, my intestines must be empty. This involves a liquid diet for today and tomorrow. And just to be sure, two 10-ounce bottles of Magensium Citrate. Dr. Friedman suggested that I take the first bottle at bedtime on Saturday night, “as it takes about 12 hours to begin working, and that way you’ll get most of the bowel-cleansing part out of the way late morning.”

We were out late last night, so I took the first bottle of “lemon flavor” wonder juice at about 1am.

I awakened at about 6am, with my intestines gurgling and heaving mightily, and off I took myself to the bathroom, the first of many trips over the next few hours.

Am currently downing the second of the two bottles, which I can hardly believe is necessary at this point.

It may be just me, or I may have to left Dr. F. know to modify his timelines for future patients.

Oy.

Post Pre-Op

Had my pre-op with Dr. Friedman yesterday.

Naturally, my first question was whether I could  bring my laptop/iPhone to the hospital with me. (Yes – as long as Tom is watching it while I’m in surgery/recovery.)

He and a nurse-practitioner examined me. He seemed cheerful and optimistic about the surgery. He remains confident that he’ll be able to do the whole procedure via laparascopy. I hope he will, too, for a number of reasons:

1. Much quicker recovery time (1 night in hospital v. 3 or 4).
2. It means they didn’t find anything so dire that they had to open me up.
3. I’ll be able to join Tom in taking Ben to college the first weekend in August. (If he has to go with a laparotomy, or traditional incision, it will be too soon for me to fly.)

On the other hand, waking up with an incision won’t necessarily be all bad news; it could simply mean that he (sorry to be graphic here, but you ARE reading a blog about there being cancer in my uterus) couldn’t fit everything out through the vagina.

In either case, we won’t really know too much about my staging until the pathology is back post-surgery. And that could take anywhere from two days to two weeks, depending on how fast the pathologist can read the results.

The bottom line, from his point of view: because I wasn’t presenting with traditional symptoms of uterine cancer (abnormal menstrual bleeding, or bleeding between periods), the likelihood is that things have been caught quite early and may well be contained to the uterus. That and $4 will get me a latte, of course, but I’m happy that he’s happy.

Tom will send out an email update once I’m out of surgery, and if I remember to install the WordPress app on my iPhone, I’ll try to update the blog once I’m out of recovery.

Florida

The doctors sprung me for our long-planned trip to Florid (read: WDW), from whence I currently post. Not much more news to share until after my pre-op on Tuesday morning…

Hopeful news

I don’t see the oncologist until Thursday morning (9th), but my GP called to let me know that the report on my CT scan is that it shows “no evidence of metastatic disease.” That would seem to indicate, pending confirmation from the oncologist, that a hysterectomy may do the trick on its own. So we’re being cautiously optimistic that my impending surgery will be all that’s required. Fingers crossed.

So what happened, exactly?

Many people (all of them women; understandable, seeing as men don’t have an immediate concern about uterine cancer) have asked me how I came to be diagnosed. The answer is: with thanks to a vigilant gynecologist.

The timeline goes something like this. On January 20 2009 (I know this because it was Inauguration Day), I began feeling a kind of twinge-y pressure in my abdomen, particularly on the right-hand side. Enough that I noticed it, but nothing really worse than mild pre-menstrual cramping. Except that a) it wasn’t the right time of the month for that, and b) it continued on and off for several days.

So I went in to see my GP, Dr. Lee Kagan, who determined that it wasn’t emanating from an organ (i.e. not the appendix, liver, spleen), and was most likely GYN-related. I accordingly toddled off on February 2 to my gynecologist, Dr. Tina Koopersmith, who did an ultrasound. While she found nothing on my right-hand side, she did find that the left ovary was trying to release three eggs at once (I’m such an overachiever), which she noted was not unusual “for a woman of your age” (ouch). She said the discomfort from that was being referred, which was why I was feeling it on the right side and not the left. She noted nothing else unusual and asked me to return in two months/cycles to make sure everything had resolved.

I went back on March 12. The twinge-y pressure was gone and the left ovary was fine, but she commented that my uterine lining looked a bit thick in the back, which she wasn’t thrilled about, so she asked me to come back in three cycles so she could look at it again. On May 22 I went back; she still didn’t like the way it looked (and now detected what she thought might be a polyp), so she declared that a D&C was in order. She did actually make a joking apology that sometimes when you go in looking for one thing, you find another, and that was exactly what had happened in this case. Thank goodness.

With my son Ben’s high school graduation just three weeks away, and many end-of-year school events taking place in the meantime, we decided to wait until afterwards for the D&C. It happened on June 25 (I awoke in recovery to find the nurses chattering excitedly about Michael Jackson being dead, and wondered exactly how strong the anesthesia had been, until they turned on the TV to show me I wasn’t hallucinating). Dr. K went to Tom and Ben while I was in recovery to say that everything had gone smoothly, she’d removed several polyps but wasn’t alarmed and that the pathology, just to be sure, would be in the following week.

On July 2 I went in for my post-op, where she told me that to her shock (not to say mine), the pathology had shown endometrial cancer. Part of her surprise was that I hadn’t presented with the typical symptoms of it, which apparently include abnormal menstrual bleeding and cycles of less than 21 days. She said that a hysterectomy would happen next, once I’d had a CT scan to determine the extent of the cancer, and recommended me to Dr. Rich Friedman, a surgical oncologist who specializes in the gynecological stuff. (As of this writing, btw, I have yet to meet him, but that should happen in the next several days.)

As I was in for the checkup by myself (who was expecting a cancer diagnosis?), I asked as many questions as occurred to me in my rather shocked state and ran downstairs to Lee Kagan’s office. Mostly because I didn’t want to be alone at that moment, and also to get a reality check on Dr. Friedman. He was very reassuring, said he would have recommended me to Dr. Friedman himself, and implored me not to Google anything – that if I had any questions, I was to ask him, or Dr. K., or Dr. F. I promised I would not Google – at least not until I have the CT scan results – and have kept that promise.

While I was expecting a bit of a time delay in getting the CT scan approved, all credit to my insurance company for snapping right to it. Within four hours of my receiving my diagnosis, they had approved the scan, which was scheduled for the very next morning. So on the morning of July 3, literally less than 24 hours since I’d gotten the news, I had my CT scan.

It’s now Sunday, July 5. Dr. Friedman’s office has said he’ll review my files (and, presumably, the scan results) on Monday, at which point they will call me to schedule a consult with him. I hope that will happen early this week. Dr. Kagan encouraged me to get the CT scan results from Dr. Friedman in person, as whether they’re good or not-so-good, he will be able to place them in context for me in a way that would be difficult over the phone.

The scan will determine what stage of cancer I’m in. Stage 1 would apparently mean that the cancer is confined to my uterus, in which case the hysterectomy itself should be the only treatment I need. If the cancer has already spread beyond the uterine wall, it will be hysterectomy plus chemo and/or radiation, presumably.

Seeing as I’ve not Googled, I really know nothing much more, just at this time, than what I’ve written here. I’ve grateful to have received loads of supportive messages from people with friends or relatives who have survived endometrial cancer and gone on to live for many decades after, so my own plan is to be one of them.

Why a Blog NOW?

I’ve long thought about writing a blog, but talked myself out of it since the amazing Bumble Ward already writes Miss Whistle’s Whistling, the blog I myself would want to write. So I’ve not started a blog before this, because I didn’t have anything in particular to post on a blog.

Until July 2, 2009, when I was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Life provides answers in the most unexpected ways.

So, seeing as I now have a rather focused topic on which to write, I’ll keep a running commentary here about my treatment and adventures along the way. It’ll be a way for those interested to follow along; for me to have a place to record what I’m experiencing; and for those who may go through the same thing after me to have at least one other person’s experience to go by.

PLEASE feel free to join in. So long as everyone plays nicely I’ll leave the commenting unmoderated (because really, I don’t need something else taking my time up right now).

Hello world!

Coming soon. Soon as in, I need to figure out WordPress. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter.