My mom has cancer
Dec. 5th, 2009 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanLast Sunday, out of the blue my mom tells me that she has a pelvic ultrasound scheduled for the following day. What? Why?
Well, it turns out that mom had been having some unexplained bleeding, so she went to her doctor about it (even though she was "sure" it was nothing) and her dr did a uterine biopsy and ordered the ultrasound. At the time she told me this on Sunday, the biopsy results weren't in yet (remember that the previous week had been Thanksgiving week).
I was pretty surprised, because these are the kinds of things my mom usually tells me about while they're going on, rather than a week later. So I had a bit of a bad feeling.
I called her Monday night to ask how the ultrasound went, and she told me that they had seen what appeared to be a 5-centimeter mass on one of the ovaries. Everyone was apparently pretty taken aback by this, because the symptoms she was having were not the usual symptoms of ovarian cancer. I think that mom had kind of geared herself up in her mind to having uterine cancer; wherein you remove the uterus and that's pretty straightforward. Ovarian cancer is a whole other beast.
Still, after meeting with the surgeon, she felt reassured that the chances of it being cancer seemed slim. Oh yeah -- did I mention, the surgeon stayed late at the end of the day to meet with her, the very next day after her ultrasound? And then put her on his operating schedule for Friday, three days after that? There are definitely some perks to working in the cancer field (specifically, mom works in the breast-cancer research center at her hospital; and the doctors she works most closely with are very familiar with their colleagues in the other cancer areas).
So on Friday, mom had the surgery. It turns out that the mass -- about the size of a tennis ball -- was mostly benign, but buried inside it was one little "nugget" that came back cancerous. :(
So they removed both ovaries, the uterus, some lymph nodes, and some other stuff. What was supposed to be a brief laparoscopic procedure turned into major abdominal surgery. Now mom is looking at two or three more days in the hospital (at minimum) and then, at some point after she gets out, chemotherapy. :(
On the bright side, the prognosis is excellent. Ovarian cancer is dangerous because in most cases, it doesn't get caught early. Usually it doesn't get found until it has already spread throughout the neighboring areas. In this case, it was extremely well contained, and unless the lymph nodes come back positive (we won't know that for about another week), we can feel pretty confident that that was all of it.
The bottom line: Mom got very lucky. She told me on Sunday that when her breast-cancer patients (some of whom don't actually have breast cancer, but are at high risk for it) have postmenopausal vaginal bleeding, she always tells them to get it checked out even though their inclination is not to; and almost always, it turns out to be nothing. So when it happened to her, she told herself that she would be a hypocrite if she didn't get it checked out, even though, again, her instinct was to ignore it. Thank goodness she decided to practice what she preaches! And thank goodness her doctor friends were able to pull strings and get her onto this guy's surgical schedule so quickly. And, you know, thank goodness for that bleeding in the first place, which remains unexplained. I asked the doctor what he thought about it. He said, you know, it's a mystery. The uterus was normal, and ovarian cancer doesn't typically cause bleeding. He actually said, you gotta wonder if maybe it was the body's way of trying to alert us that something was wrong. Who knows?
Anyway, needless to say it has been a difficult few days. I'm worn out. I'll post more later, I guess.
Well, it turns out that mom had been having some unexplained bleeding, so she went to her doctor about it (even though she was "sure" it was nothing) and her dr did a uterine biopsy and ordered the ultrasound. At the time she told me this on Sunday, the biopsy results weren't in yet (remember that the previous week had been Thanksgiving week).
I was pretty surprised, because these are the kinds of things my mom usually tells me about while they're going on, rather than a week later. So I had a bit of a bad feeling.
I called her Monday night to ask how the ultrasound went, and she told me that they had seen what appeared to be a 5-centimeter mass on one of the ovaries. Everyone was apparently pretty taken aback by this, because the symptoms she was having were not the usual symptoms of ovarian cancer. I think that mom had kind of geared herself up in her mind to having uterine cancer; wherein you remove the uterus and that's pretty straightforward. Ovarian cancer is a whole other beast.
Still, after meeting with the surgeon, she felt reassured that the chances of it being cancer seemed slim. Oh yeah -- did I mention, the surgeon stayed late at the end of the day to meet with her, the very next day after her ultrasound? And then put her on his operating schedule for Friday, three days after that? There are definitely some perks to working in the cancer field (specifically, mom works in the breast-cancer research center at her hospital; and the doctors she works most closely with are very familiar with their colleagues in the other cancer areas).
So on Friday, mom had the surgery. It turns out that the mass -- about the size of a tennis ball -- was mostly benign, but buried inside it was one little "nugget" that came back cancerous. :(
So they removed both ovaries, the uterus, some lymph nodes, and some other stuff. What was supposed to be a brief laparoscopic procedure turned into major abdominal surgery. Now mom is looking at two or three more days in the hospital (at minimum) and then, at some point after she gets out, chemotherapy. :(
On the bright side, the prognosis is excellent. Ovarian cancer is dangerous because in most cases, it doesn't get caught early. Usually it doesn't get found until it has already spread throughout the neighboring areas. In this case, it was extremely well contained, and unless the lymph nodes come back positive (we won't know that for about another week), we can feel pretty confident that that was all of it.
The bottom line: Mom got very lucky. She told me on Sunday that when her breast-cancer patients (some of whom don't actually have breast cancer, but are at high risk for it) have postmenopausal vaginal bleeding, she always tells them to get it checked out even though their inclination is not to; and almost always, it turns out to be nothing. So when it happened to her, she told herself that she would be a hypocrite if she didn't get it checked out, even though, again, her instinct was to ignore it. Thank goodness she decided to practice what she preaches! And thank goodness her doctor friends were able to pull strings and get her onto this guy's surgical schedule so quickly. And, you know, thank goodness for that bleeding in the first place, which remains unexplained. I asked the doctor what he thought about it. He said, you know, it's a mystery. The uterus was normal, and ovarian cancer doesn't typically cause bleeding. He actually said, you gotta wonder if maybe it was the body's way of trying to alert us that something was wrong. Who knows?
Anyway, needless to say it has been a difficult few days. I'm worn out. I'll post more later, I guess.
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Date: 2009-12-06 02:07 pm (UTC)I hope from here on out it's a good recovery and the end of this. Thinking of you and your mom...
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Date: 2009-12-06 09:00 pm (UTC)*hugs*
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