Post by jaylock on Jul 1, 2018 8:03:28 GMT -8
Hello my Inspired forum friends. It’s been a while and my apologies to those of you who were worried about me. I just didn’t have the energy or motivation to be very sociable, and felt as if I was always just moaning about how lousy I felt, anyway.
A lot has happened since I last visited but, long story short, after being misdiagnosed for 18 months as having constipation and an overactive bladder by my local hospital, a visit to a different hospital ER revealed a 13 by 14 centimeter ovarian tumor that has metastasized to my lung. I have stage 4 ovarian cancer. What’s worse is that after reviewing my records from the local hospital, it turns out that the radiologist there marked the pelvic tumor in August of 2017, 8 months before my diagnosis at the new hospital, and the doctor at the local hospital even wrote it up in his summary, saying I needed to get a PET scan. Unfortunately he forgot to tell me about it. In hindsight, all of the symptoms of ovarian cancer were there, but the physicians only seemed to see me as someone with complications from paralysis as opposed to a woman with a history of breast cancer.
On a positive note, I’m currently receiving some of the best medical care I’ve ever experienced, in Beth Isreal Deaconess in Boston. I have different teams of physicians who coordinate every aspect of my care. The nurses are truly wonderful (well, you know, except for a couple here and there) and I’m actually feeling better now than I have in a couple of years. I’ve already have three rounds of chemo and am responding well. The side effects have been minimal except for fatigue, and the tumors have now shrunk enough for surgery, which is scheduled for next Thursday, July 5th.
Since my bowel routine has become such a nightmare, I also asked if I could have a colostomy performed at the same time, and the gynecological surgeon actually seemed quite relived by the suggestion. Even though she doesn’t suspect any bowel involvement, her job will just be that much easier if she doesn’t need to worry about my colon as well. So, I’ll be having a GI surgeon working on me at the same time.
I do have questions about the colostomy, but I’ll use another post to try to get some advice.
In the meantime, I’ll read through the latest threads and see what you’ve all been up to.
