NO = you have to stop biking with your brother.
NO = you should no longer walk with your neighbor Patsy up and down the hills of your neighborhood.
NO = you can't lift anything over 5 lb.'s
NO = you really should minimize the amount of times you climb the stairs in your own house.
As of May 23rd my life instantly and unexpectedly consisted of NO to just about everything and yes to many things I would have emphatically chosen to say No to forever,
I could have done without the feeling of dread when my family physician's office called after a week of multiple tests to tell me that she wanted to talk to me in person, to "discuss" the results. It would have been less frustrating if I hadn't had to help her deal with her own denial as we discussed the results. I had done my research and knew that even though she kept insisting that a laparoscopy would be possible, everything I had read clearly stated that when cysts are 6cm in size and there are more than one, well, a laparoscopy is simply not feasible. Waiting for her to go over my test results with her own gynecologist/college friend was emotionally draining, as she confirmed what I already dreaded hearing. Major surgery was rapidly appearing on my horizon.
Most of all, I would have really preferred to have bypassed the feeling of utter terror when I was sent to the oncology surgeon. Naturally, I was deeply scared for myself, but the terror that felt like ice in my veins, stemmed from how it would affect my children. Losing my dad a few years ago to lung cancer was a nightmare experience for them and I hated, with every fiber of my being, having to walk into the cancer center because I knew how that reality would affect them.
So I didn't tell them where I was going, just that I was seeing a specialist. Details could wait for later.
My surgeon was incredible! I have never, even in working in the field of oncology, ever met a man with such gentle compassion and empathy for the questions and unspoken fears of his patients. I've also never placed a doctor on a pedestal, because that has always seemed unrealistic and also unfair, since they are human and fallible, just as we all are as human beings. But, for the first time in my life I easily see how it happens... that a doctor impacts your life to so remarkably, so distinctly, you can't help but place him up there.
He was honest, forthright and yet somehow encouraging. Surgery was scheduled for June 13th, with no option for the small unobtrusive bikini cut I hopefully requested, because he explained that he had to be able to access my entire abdomen for possible cancer staging. I didn't frantically embrace the ramifications of that possibility, but I couldn't ignore them either. My way of coping prior to the surgery was to organize anything and everything, to the nth degree.
After my surgery, I woke up in the surreal world of that unique anesthetic haze, and was instantly anchored by the strong warm reassuring feeling of my surgeon tightly gripping my hand, gently but firmly rubbing my arm and repeatedly telling me that no cancer was found. He intuitively provided an invaluable gift by taking the time to be there at such a crucial moment.
Morphine is a wonderful thang, but if I never have to experience it again, I will be more than fine with that. It's hard to be convincingly coherent whilst alternately floating off into loopy land and discovering the reality that pain has thresholds you couldn't possibly have imagined existing. Thankfully, I was lucid enough to comprehend that although the surgery was extensive in some unexpected ways, in the most important way that we were all expecting, it was not. "No" became my new favorite word.
NO = NO cancer present, even when all the final pathology reports returned two days later.
NO = chemo is not necessary.
NO = you don't have to remain in the hospital as long as predicted.
"Yes" soon became the very bestest of words ever spoken.
Yes - If you listen and heed the advice of your surgeon, you can expect a full recovery.
Yes - we are very serious about resting and letting your body heal for the *entire* 6 weeks post-op. (How my Dr. managed not to roll his eyes and laugh when I asked him (pre-op) if I could do this, that and the other thing if I felt up to it at 4 weeks post-op, I'll never know. Geez, I felt like such an idjit later on.
Yes - you will able to hike when the trees are blazing into the colors you love as autumn sends its welcome chilly temps.
Yes - you can once again embrace the "pure joy of arbitrary passions". I came across that phrase this week and it captured my complete attention. They can range from the small, simple, joyful awareness of how rain drops sound falling late at night in the corn field (it's a whisper-y soft sound I'd never heard before) to the encompassing excitement and trepidation of beginning a new job and feeling so passionate about it that you feel like you're going to burst!
My list of things yet to experience in life was long & varied before May.
It's now considerably longer.
Enthusiastically so.
[I decided that if I had a sig file atm, it would be something else I recently read.
Live boldly, take risks...make somebody say, "What the hell was THAT all about?!?"]
;-)
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