October 2010

This morning, my first at home after getting out of the hospital, I got all prettied up. I’m allowed to shower, so I washed and styled my hair. I gave myself a facial, exfoliating those bad chemicals that exude from your pores, residue of strange, strong medicines and drop-dead terror, frustration, horror.

I put on a long flowing sundress I haven’t fit into for fifteen years, but I bought it on a fun trip to Hamilton Cove on Catalina Island and never could bear to throw it out. I found it in the back of my closet while looking for a dress – I needed something without a waistband, because I don’t want anything rubbing against the ten-inch-long line of staples running up my abdomen. It looked so good I put on earrings. And perfume. In a while I’m going for the makeup.

Well, maybe not.

After all the negativity, I want to celebrate, and I rejoice this morning in being alive: a sweet-smelling, optimistic, on-the-road to healthy 56-year old recipient of modern science. My team found precursors to ovarian cancer – cysts that were idling at neutral, revving their motors, ready to pop the clutch and burn rubber into a form of cancer that provides no unique symptoms. You feel bloated? Could be something you ate, or OC. Backache? Arthritis or OC. By the time you figure out what it is, it can be very challenging disease to conquer. Many women do, and I consider them in a special class, above mere humans. I kiss their feet, and wonder if I would have had the strength to join their ranks.

But I didn’t have to, because Mother Nature whispered in my ear that the very intermittent, vague, pinging pain I felt in my right abdomen might be something to look into. So I did, and my doctors took it seriously – well, actually, one medical establishment did (Thank you, Loma Linda University Medical Center) and one absolutely did not. I got a second opinion from a totally different place, different city even. Dr. Goofy said my ovaries were fine and dismissed my fears with a (literal) wave of the hand, saying, “That was probably just something you read on the Internet.” I feel like mailing him my biopsy results.

More later. I’m tired now.