My friend Emily showed me this site recently, she is the writer of Our Lady of the Broadreach site, dedicated to her love affair with sailing, Chicago, her cats, and other life experiences. I have been feeling the urge to write about my healing process, both for my own emotional and spiritual therapy and to be of help to others going through a similar process.
I was diagnosed with a borderline ovarian cancer in 1996, after a tumor on my right ovary ruptured one morning. It was unknownst to me and my doctor that I had a tumor growing in me, partly from the lack of insurance 2 years prior when I began having unusual symptoms (increased weight gain, irritability, menstrual periods getting farther apart and when I did have one the menses was dark to black in color, clumpy), partly from being too busy (or too afraid) to go back to an MD. She told me I was probably peri-menopausal, at age 36.........all the while, it was a cancer developing. These tumors, granulosa cell tumors, have a tendency to torse (or twist), and, thus, mine ruptured one morning. Painful! I thought I was having bad menstrual cramps, but the pain grew, the nauseous feeling developed, and so I went to my naturopathic physician.......she palpated the right lower abdominal quadrant ONCE and I was in extreme pain!!! She was too freaked out by it all and sent me to the original MD, who again had to palpate the quadrant, but then loaded me up in my car and drove me to the ER. A tumor was found with ultrasound, and I was readied for surgery the next morning. I was also told to round up a potential gynecologic oncologist who could do more surgery if they found it to be cancerous (they wouldn't do anymore surgery, just sew me up and send me to the gyn onc). Being as I was living in Missoula, MT at the time, my sister-in-law in Portland got me set up with a female gyn onc there.
I remember waking up after the surgery, and the surgeon saying to me "it's benign!"
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