My doctor came in and immediately put her hands on my knees while she was talking to me. This was new. I like my doctor because she is all business. Almost a dude, but not quite. But with that simple act of touch, she made me feel more comforted. She explained that they would insert saline into me and do another ultrasound. She told me to watch on the screen. If a dark line showed up around the fibroid tumor, then they knew it was all in my uterus and pretty standalone.
They asked me if I was allergic to iodine. I remember thinking that was odd.
I watched on the screen as they did the ultrasound. No dark line appeared.
At one point my doctor said, “Okay, you’re doing to feel a little discomfort. A little cramping.” She was going to do a small biopsy. That bit about the discomfort? That was the biggest load of crap. I actually cried out. I had tears coming out. Discomfort is like being a little gassy, being squished into a too-small seat on an airplane or being stuck in a conversation with a close talker. What was happening here was just painful. After it was done, my doctor said she’d get back in touch with results. I pressed her on timing. “We have a trip coming up to Nepal. Is that okay? Can we still go?”
“Yes,” she said. “Remind me when we meet next so I can give you some back-up measures for while you’re there, but go on your trip.”
After she left I tried some awkward maneuver of getting off the table and back into clothes in front of Wonder Boy without revealing anything gross. It couldn’t be helped though. That “discomfort” left a sheet covered in blood beneath me.
We both just sort of stared at it.
At my follow-up appointment a week later, I knew it wasn’t good when my doctor’s first question to me was, “So you aren’t planning on having children. Is that correct?”
She then explained that the tumor was large, had grown quickly and was both inside and outside my uterus. The size was causing my symptoms like having trouble emptying my bladder and pain. The size and its mere presence were causing my never-ending period.
My doctor said a lot of things, but Wonder Boy and I were in shock. I had gone in thinking I was expecting the worse but still not prepared when the worst got said. He had gone in thinking I would be put on some pills and that’d be it.
We asked questions, but they were terrible because we weren’t processing information correctly. I learned that Nepal was totally fine. That I tested negative for cancer in my endometrial lining but that they didn’t know about the fibroid tumor. So few are cancerous that it wasn’t a huge concern, but my family has a terribly history with cancer. And because of that history, she was recommending that the hysterectomy include removal of my cervix and ovaries. The surgery would have a 3-6 week recovery time and my doctor recommended the full 6 weeks with three weeks of bed rest.
She asked me to make an appointment for after Nepal to walk through what I’d chosen and so we could schedule surgery.
And that’s what’s so weird. You go to a doctor. You get this horrible news. You’re given options, but you’re still reeling from the news so it’s hard to really challenge the options and understand them. And yet, that was my task.