Uprooted

"You have ovarian cancer," the emergency room doc said solemnly. I looked around the room in disbelief, wondering, Who, exactly, are you talking to? When no one else materialized, I silently said, Wait, WHAT? This can’t be right. I thought we were talking diverticulitis, and now you say CANCER??! I felt like I had landed in some dystopian version of The Price Is Right game show and had unwittingly chosen the wrong door. Could I go back to Diverticulitis behind Door #2, Bob? For most of my life, I had been healthy, with no medical or health issues. As a child and teenager, I was very active with ballet, horseback riding, and life on a farm. That was back in the ‘70s. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who spent part of her busy day preparing simple yet nutritious home-cooked meals, often using food we grew ourselves. As a young adult, I remained busy and active with my portrait photography business, being a wife and a mother to two young boys. We ate simply yet healthily. By my mid-thirties, I was a single mom with two divorces under my hot mess belt. When I later remarried—always a bride, never a bridesmaid!—I closed the photography business (this was back when only brick-and-mortar shops were considered “legit”) and took a nine-to-five office job that would allow me to spend more time with my growing kids. The new job and time spent with my kids involved a lot of sitting. Sitting at a desk, at football games, at baseball games, and even more sitting at track meets. Fast food became a staple, and I gained a few pounds. A few years later, after the kids graduated from high school, I embarked on a new venture: a wine and art bar. Thoroughly enjoying the wine business, my husband and I often consumed two bottles of wine a night. Someone had to do that research! More pounds claimed me as their own. My workout routine consisted solely of lifting my wine glass and leading wine tours. For the first time, I felt middle-aged. Although I was middle-aged, I certainly didn't want to feel that way. In retrospect, I can see that some poor choices and a lack of self-care had started to take their toll. A few years later, shortly after selling the wine bar, my stomach seemed to blossom! My husband, bless his heart, didn’t mention it. I just chalked it up to getting the middle-age middle. One night, after returning from a holiday in Galveston, Texas, I was awakened by excruciating abdominal pain. My first thought was food poisoning, perhaps from all that delicious seafood we had devoured. The pain initially subsided but then became a roller coaster over the next few days, and I was very bloated, looking like I was six months pregnant. I went to the walk-in clinic, where a series of blood tests and X-rays were taken. The diagnosis was constipation. I was shocked; I had no idea constipation could feel (or look) like that! I had experienced some constipation issues in the past, but nothing that required medical attention or was particularly painful. Laxatives and painkillers were the recommended remedies. I followed all the instructions, but the pain persisted and became overwhelming, which led to a middle-of-the-night visit to my small-town rural emergency room. The same routine—X-rays and blood work—only to be told once again that I was simply constipated. I found that hard to believe, given the number of laxatives I was taking. So… why did I have a fever? And why was my white blood cell count abnormal? Once again, I was prescribed laxatives and painkillers, and, this time, some anti-anxiety medication. For good measure, I threw in some prune juice. Finally, one week later, after no poop or pain relief, the husband of a friend, who is also a doctor, examined me. He didn't know what was wrong but noticed something suspicious on the X-ray and immediately sent me to the local hospital emergency room for a CT scan. Thinking it might be diverticulitis, he assured me he knew a great surgeon if I needed to go that route. Surgery?! I had never even broken a bone; surely, there must be drugs! After the CT scan and additional blood work, the emergency room doctor brought my husband into the room and, after dropping the cancer bomb, simply stated, “The tumor is the size of a grapefruit, and you need surgery as soon as possible.” My husband and I were speechless. The doctor kept me at the hospital overnight so that I could be stabilized for transport to Spokane and a larger facility that could perform the necessary surgery. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t sleep and spent the night with Dr. Google, where I discovered that ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest forms of women's cancer by percentage and is usually not detected until it reaches a late stage, primarily because the symptoms are not particularly egregious and are often attributed to many other—read, less life-altering—conditions. Late-stage survival is typically six months. HOLY SH*T! I poked myself to make sure I wasn’t nightmaring. My amygdala went into full hijack mode, and all the F’s came out to play… Fight: I will kick your ass, Cancer! You wanna fight? C’mon, you son of a b*tch! You messed with the wrong person! Flight: RUN!!! Hurry! As fast and far as… GO NOW! Don’t look back! Freeze: SHHHHHH! Don’t breathe! Lie still! Don’t make a sound! Cancer can’t see me if I don’t move. Fawn: Okay, Cancer, what do you want? Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it, I’ll do it. Just please make nice and go away! Fine: I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. This will be fine. Lots of people survive cancer. Truly, I’m fine. Faint: Well, I tried to faint. I really wanted to just go unconscious until this whole thing passed. But no such luck.