Step 1: My Story

(This is to catch you up. I promise they won’t all be this long.) 

     I’m 25 years old.  As of two months ago I considered myself to be a fairly healthy, fit, generally happy young woman. I looked more or less like this:

   

(Okay this is an insanely flattering picture taken more like 2 years ago. 

Shut up. Stop interrupting. This is my story.)

     I love my job as a tech in the Emergency Department at Children’s Hospital, it’s a fantastic experience. I spent the summer filling out applications for Physician Assistant programs up and down the east coast. And, of course, I spent a good bit of the summer eating too many burgers, drinking too much beer, and spending a little too much time lounging around. So what if my belly was starting to stick out a little? I’d just work out more in the fall, right?

    Forward to one month ago: My beer belly is more prominent, and it’s not really going away. Actually, it feels pretty firm too. And I have to pee kind of frequently. My mom convinces me to go to the doctor. My doctor immediately sends me for a pelvic ultrasound. The ultrasound techs immediately call the radiologist attending, who immediately sends me to my gynecologist. Things are starting to get suspicious. My GYN tells me I have a cyst “the size of a grapefruit” and that I’ll need to get a CT scan and see a surgeon for removal. I am thinking this is totally surprising and a little overwhelming! We name my cyst “pamplemousse” and I go for the CT scan. This is the result:

     

THAT IS NOT THE SIZE OF ANY GRAPEFRUIT I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!! I immediately start showing these photos to anyone and everyone I know. How cool is this? It’s enormous! I feel fine! So weird in such a neat way! I rename my pamplemousse “Bertha” to reflect the increase in size.

   I underwent surgery on October 6^th. Because of Bertha’s girth, I had to have an open vertical incision from my belly button all the way down to my pubic bone. Guess what? It hurt. Otherwise, things were looking good. Bertha seemed like a completely benign teratoma, I was healing quickly, and the end was in sight. Or so I thought.

   On October 17^th I was back in the hospital with severe stomach pain. Turns out I had an intestinal obstruction, probably as a side effect of scarring from the surgery, and I’d need to be in the hospital for a week or so, with an naso-gastric tube in. Extremely irritating. I made this face:

   Here’s where it gets really terrible: A few days into this hospital stay my surgeon came in with some pretty bad news. Despite all appearances, Bertha was malignant. It’s a type of cancer called immature cystic teratoma, and apparently pretty rare. I know I won’t be able to convey how shocking and sudden and scary that news is, so I won’t even try. I was just concentrating on getting better from major surgery, and now I have to think about stuff like life expectancy and chemotherapy and preserving fertility and it’s still all overwhelming.

  So, that pretty much catches you all up to where I am now. Thanks for sticking through a pretty long story! I’m still in the hospital recovering from my obstruction, but I got my NG tube out and hopefully I’ll be headed home soon. Then, I’ll have about a week to get ready for some intense chemotherapy. 

I’ll probably be posting regularly in the next few days with info on the chemo, my long-term prognosis, and MOST IMPORTANTLY…. What am I going to do with my hair? Stay tuned.