I'll never capitalize cancer

I have alot going on in my life, more than just cancer and chemo. Sure it's a big part of my life right now, but it's not the most important part of my life. You will never see me spell it with a capital "c".

I'm a Wife and Mom. I love my Family. I have good Friends. We do fun stuff and dumb stuff and sometimes we argue and then we laugh again. We go to work and to the grocery store and we go swimming and have birthday parties and get ready for the first day of school.

I keep saying that I don't want ovarian cancer to define me, but sometimes I just can't help it.

A good friend put it this way for me "cancer may be defining your life for the moment, but it is not your entire life. You seem to just make time for it." That made me feel better.

If you want to see it from the beginning, my cancer story begins in March.

The rest of my story is happening now.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Meeting my Chemo Doctors

Thursday morning I meet Dr Kong and Dr Lavalais at the Julie & Ben Rogers Cancer Institute.

Briefly, here is what I understand about what is going on :
I have a cyst about the size of a large orange near my right ovary, both of my ovaries are enlarged, my uterus is enlarged due to fibroids, and my colon and small bowel also may be involved. This is making things kinda crowded and uncomfortable in my belly. It's also crowding my lungs so i can't get a deep breath, so my lungs have fluid in them. At MD Anderson, they drained off just over 2 liters of fluid from my right lung. The pathology on the fluid showed malignant cancer cells, so I do have cancer. The cells are gyncological in origin and my CT scan did not show any nodules in my lungs, so most likely I do not have lung cancer.
I was told that cancer cells produce a fluid. The fluid along with the cyst and enlarged ovaries and uterus is adding to the distention and is why I look like I am about 3 months pregnant. It's also why I ache and can't stand up straight and have to take painkillers all day long.

I am told that the chemo will shrink my cyst and dry up the fluid so I should begin to feel better within a couple of days of my first treatment.

0 comments: