Around the Christmas holiday my abdomen bloated up so much it looked like I was pregnant. I figured maybe I wasn’t getting enough fiber in my diet so I increased my fiber intake as well as drank more glasses of water but it didn’t help. Over the next couple of weeks I was so busy with holiday plans that I didn’t get a chance to make an appointment to check it out. I figured eventually it would go down because I knew I wasn’t pregnant. But it didn’t and I was getting pretty worried and annoyed because I’d spent so much time over the spring, summer and fall losing weight and working to get my tummy flat and here I was bloated and looking like I was in my sixth month of pregnancy.
After we returned from visiting relatives on Cape Cod, I decided to start researching why I was so big and getting bigger. I goggled, “look like I’m pregnant” and found a forum where they were talking about fibroids and how you can bloat up enough that you look like you’re pregnant. One of the treatments was a hysterectomy. So, by this time I’m pretty upset and I make the call to my doctor to get started figuring out what the heck is wrong with me.
The doctor did an internal and as she was doing it I felt incredible pain on my left side near my hip bone. Now I was freaked out, what the heck could it be? She sent me to have an ultrasound and I was able to get an appointment for the next day. I was to drink a bunch of water and not allowed to go to the bathroom until after the ultrasound. That was torture! But unfortunately more was to come.
That night the doctor called and told me that I had a “suspicious mass” near my left ovary and that I needed it taken out (my husband figure out later that it was the size of a baseball). She gave me the name of a doctor and told me to call him right way and get an appointment as soon as possible and if I had any trouble, I was to call her and she would call his office to make sure I got an appointment.
I was devastated! I called my husband, who was stuck in Staten Island waiting for a tow truck because his car had broken down after he was returning from a funeral, crying that I had a tumor and I would have to get it removed. He could barely hear me and as we were talking the tow trunk came and he had to get off the phone with me.
My twelve year old, Samantha, had been taking a nap after school and heard me crying and heard what I said to my husband. She came out crying and upset that I had a tumor and that it might be cancer. She was already mad at God because her Uncle Tom’s cancer returned and now this pretty much pushed her over the edge. One of her greatest fears has always been something happening to me and now her worst nightmare was coming true.
So, I comforted her and told her not to worry about it because we don’t know if it’s cancer or not. We have no idea what the Lord has in store for us but we can trust him because he loves us and has always protected us. He promises that we are in his hand. What more can we ask? And besides, do we really expect him to keep us from experiencing life and all that it has in store for us including the bad stuff?
The next day I called the oncologist (still not knowing that he was an oncologist) and tried to make an appointment with his office, it was as hard as my doctor warned me it would be. But the office did call me back and made an appointment the following Monday. So, that meant a long weekend where we had time to think about what it all means. And of course this was the weekend that we were going to go over my sister’s house and celebrate my dad’s birthday (woo hoo! Don’t you feel like celebrating when you find out that you may have cancer — or that your loved one may have it). And of course while we’re there my aunt calls and tells my mom that my 91 year old grandma is in the hospital with chest pains (it turned out that her medicine was making her heart beat too fast and then pause — she wasn’t too worried about the too fast, just the pausing. They put her on new medicine which seems to have fixed the problem 🙂
On Monday my husband and I saw the oncologist and found out that there was a very good chance that the tumor was cancerous. Evidently, it’s common for malignant tumors to produce fluid. Now, there’s also the chance that it’s a benign tumor acting like a malignant tumor or even a fluid producing benign tumor (I don’t know the difference — I was pretty shell shocked at this point). But whether it was benign or malignant, I have to have a complete hysterectomy. Now, most people I’ve talked to don’t think this is so bad since I’m old and rapidly nearing menopause but I’m bummed. I’m not looking forward to the night sweats and a much bushier mustache! I figured I had a few more years to go before I had to even think about it (I was hoping to be 55 when menopause hit 🙂
But that wasn’t even the end of the bad news. If it is cancer, then they have to check to make sure that no cancer cells seeded in my intestines. Evidently this is a risk because of all the fluid can have cancers floating around it! Lovely!
So, there it is. I’ll save you the gory details of my CAT Scan (I was praying to the Lord that he would let me live as they injected me with the contrast dye — I wouldn’t have even worried about it if they hadn’t made me sign that stupid wavier) and the struggle I had to go through with the insurance company to actually get to have it (they couldn’t make up their mind if I needed authorization or not) and just say that I’ve been a little out of it for the last two weeks. I haven’t felt too much like blogging about politics as you can see from the amount of posting I’ve been doing lately. Mostly I’ve been playing Zuma and reading trashy thrillers. Thank the Lord for Zuma! It’s kept me sane as I’ve struggled to come to grips with this.
I’m also thankful for six years of seminary, nothing prepares you for a cancer scare like the knowledge of the God you love and serve. I would be lost without that understanding. It’s given me such comfort as I face the uncertainty of what is in store for me. I thought of a passage from a book I read for my Prophets class last semester, Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport/?utm_source=mmcginty&utm_medium=mmcginty and how I realized that it helped prepare me for the news of my tumor. Here’s an excerpt from my response paper to the book:

But in one of the best parts of the book, he aptly handles the much more complicated issue of God’s sovereignty in the face of tragedy and grief. How can Calvinists handle the grief of a loved one, knowing that a loving, holy and just God allowed them to be struck by tragedy? Mouw’s response is brilliant and helpful, we can face the fact that the God who is “no stranger to us” allowed this to happen and we can contend with him over it just as Job and the psalmists did when they poured out their heart in bitterness, anger and hope; questioning why God would allow such a thing to happen to them and then remembering that we have a compassionate God who sent his only begotten Son to suffer for us. Jesus, who is not far off but came near, who understands our suffering, “who can sympathize with our weakness,” (Hebrews 4:15), who suffered on the cross and experienced the silence and distance of God for us. He knows what it means to feel forsaken and that knowledge helps us during times when the hardships of life overtake us, as my daughter learned when she found out that her uncle’s cancer had returned. Having just read Mouw’s response to the silence of God, I was able to comfort her when she wondered why God hated us. After I reminded her of our many blessings and the incredible love of God that pours out of me to her, I was able to focus her attention of a Savior who understands our suffering because he suffered too.

We do not worship a god who just showers us with despair and sits above us in lofty splendor, no we worship a God who knows what it’s like in the muck and mire of life because he was down here with us. He knows what we are going through and he is their with me as I go through it. I don’t have to face this alone because I have the Creator and Sustainer of the universe going through it with me 🙂 Who wouldn’t be confident to face surgery knowing that!
Sorry to leave you in limbo wondering if I have cancer or not. I’m in the same boat as you and won’t know until I wake up from surgery. I’ll let you know as soon as I can (um…you guys realize I don’t intend to bring my computer to the hospital, right 🙂
I ask that my brothers and sisters in Christ keep me in their prayers (and pray for the Jolly Blogger while you’re at it), I would appreciate it very much. I feel God’s love every time someone tells me that they are praying for me and I need a lot of love right now 🙂