Looking ahead to the big surgery

When I had my belly surgery in 2015, the recovery was pretty straightforward. I was in the hospital for a few days, and then stayed home I think two or three more weeks before going back to work. I was in pain, but it was manageable, and slowly and steadily I got better.

The doctor gave me the cancer diagnosis a day or two after my surgery, while I was still in the hospital. Although my care team had suspected it was cancer, it wasn’t confirmed until the mass they took out during surgery was sent to pathology. And then at that point, knowing the kind of cancer it was, they said that surgery was the only answer anyway. So, at that point, the worst was over, and I just needed to recover my strength. The cancer diagnosis was scary, but really I felt like I had just dodged a bullet and life could move on.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, after that surgery I had to have SO MUCH follow-up with scans, blood test, doctor visits, etc. But (other than the thyroid cancer episode) every time the answer was “Looks fine so far, nothing to worry about.” Honestly, after so many years having gone by with that same answer, I started to think that maybe this whole thing could be treated as just a scary story from my past.

However, that was then and this is now. A lot has changed for me. The biggest event was that my mom passed away in early 2020. Since then, understandably, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mortality, and the fragility of life. How things can change in an instant, and lives of entire families sent into upheaval because of a medical diagnosis.

My mom had a stroke when she was age 44, after having surgery to remove a benign tumor on her pituitary. She never entirely fully recovered from the stroke, but within ten years was able to live a rich and full life again. As I had been inching closer to my own age 44, I had been wondering if I would mirror my mom and have a catastrophic medical event of my own. Well, I guess I know the answer to that now, since I turned 44 this past July. Age 44 is now officially bad luck, in my book.

Looking ahead to my 2022 surgery, a lot of things are scary for me. It’s a much more major surgery than I had in 2015, so of course the chance of complications is higher. Getting a stoma is a possibility. I’ll be abruptly thrown into medical menopause, and will have all of the hormonal changes to deal with. I’ll be out of work longer, and I do love my job. Part of my treatment plan this time around will be monthly Sandostatin injections for the rest of my life, which may bring its own host of side effects.

I had “a one-time weird cancer story” and now I have “an ongoing fight with cancer”. I’m looking down the road at many, many years of monitoring and possible additional surgeries in my future. This cancer is slow-growing, but if I look at the fact that it took seven years to grow back to this extent, will I have to do this all over again every seven years? I’m trying to make my peace with that possibility.

There is one really big piece of good news at this point in my story. Due to the previous surgery and what the pathology revealed at this time, my doctors know what kind of cancer I have. They know the best ways to treat it. They, at least, have more answers than they did going into the 2015 surgery, which makes me feel much better.