Queen of my cancer domain

There is a certain nervousness and apprehension as I approach my oncology follow up visits. 

I know to expect the following;  a vaginal exam, a pap smear, and my scar gets a review. 

I never really thought I would ever blog about these things, but here I am talking all about my girly bits.

My oncology center has a pretty new office, it is fancy schmanzy. I was able to see their previous office space several years ago. I helped a colleague through their own diagnosis. The space has different kinds of patient rooms and this visit I got a room that I call a throne room. They have these modern chair-that-turns-in-to-an-exam-table-complete-with-stirrups-that-miraculously-appear things.

After being ushered in to the room by the nurse  I proclaimed that I was glad I got to get a throne room. I  sat down with royal aplomb, gestured grandly,  and proclaimed myself as queen of my own cancer.

This is the chair, with me in it... and yes, you can see my butt poking from behind that silly paper drape if you look hard enough:

Anyway, turns out that my abdomen is not lit up by my disco ball ovaries. 

My oncologist is incredible, there is a gentleness to him that is unseen in so many other physicians. All the Ob-gyn's I know consider him their go-to guy for their patients with oncology needs. I understand why.

When he examines me, there is a certain gentleness. A real look at his handiwork not in how they reflect on him, but on how they are for the patient. If you are open to the idea of therapeutic touch, I would say this doctor was born with it. 

So, as I lay on that table-formerly-a-chair, I asked him what he had done with my ovaries. He explained that he had tied them down to a ligament. He followed up by explaining that they are about 3 cm lower than where they used to be. he added that they should continue to function as long as they normally would. My ovaries were not left to roll around. Nor were they hung up on my ribs like a disco ball.  

I told him my story was better. He laughed and said he thought so too.

Cancer patients tend to develop a kind of crush on their oncologists. I can totally see that. It is not the kind of crush where you feel love. It is the kind that comes from feeling gratitude, It is pretty amazing.

I am still reflecting a lot on gratitude. It is hard to properly express gratitude to people  in this experience. Gratitude, it seems, is my lesson that is still being developed in this experience.

On The Facebook today, I came across an essay on suffering and gratitude. There was something intense to ponder  in the message. And the message was made moreso when the essay ended with this message:

I am grateful for your hair, the beauty of your eyes, your way with words, your heart that always is ready to give, your willingness to grow, your willingness to not know, the way you garden, naked, early in the morning, your love of family, your love of wine, your love of Scrabble, your glass-half-full ways, your love for your son, your belief in God, your belief in the power of poetry, your belief in the power of love, your Catholic ways, your love of your mother, your love of Mother Divine, your pale white skin, your lips, your smile, the way you love your friends, the way you love. (Source)

It appears that little piece was about a woman named Adele. I believe Adele is pictured at the bottom of the page in source link. That part, though, touched on some of the things that people comment about me or that I feel about me. In some divine sense, I want to believe that I was meant to see it. And to relish this sisterhood I share with this woman named Adele.

TMI

 Navigating a cancer diagnosis that has a surgical intervention is pretty complicated. In the case of breast cancer  the mastectomy or lumpectomy scar is right there for you to look at, it is hard to hide from, even in a case where the patient has opted to get reconstruction. 

Girly bits, the lower ones, cancer is a little different. 

Both breast and cervical cancer are traditionally considered women's cancer (though men can and do get breast cancer). Our breasts and vagina's are the most obvious parts of what makes us women (yes, yes, yes, aside from all that inside touchy-feely kind of stuff).

I have not had breast cancer, but I used to sit on a board for an organization that served women who had breast cancer, and as such I heard a ton of stories. Women's sexuality, for many of us, are tied up in our boobs.

Are they small. Are they big. What kind of nipples. Do they sag. Do they perk. 

People we, as women, love intimately, typically love them.

I can't imagine the mental turmoil surrounding losing your breasts.

I know too well the psychological turmoil in losing your lower girly bits.

For starters, here is a pictorial cartoon like representation that I took from the ethers about what those girly bits look like. I would have used actual body parts, but really, it can be hard to tell from something like a medical school cadaver image. 

It should not be a surprise to anyone that I owned these parts. These parts are also part of what made me a girl. Aside from boobs and all that other stuff. Gender identity... I believe that is the new buzzword.

This is me, before the surgery.

So, below is a picture of me after the surgery. I had to use some fancy apps on my phone to remove those parts which I had removed. But this is all that is left inside me. Most of my vagina. And my ovaries. Everything else was taken out. My uterus - OUT. My cervix - OUT. My Fallopian Tubes - OUT. There were some other things that got taken out too; lymph nodes, tissue... but those aren't girly bits.  Oh, and you may be wondering what is up with my ovaries. For now, since I plan on asking my oncologist about them at the next meeting, I just imagine that he blinged them up and hung them on my ribs  or something once he separated them from my uterus and Fallopian tubes. I imagine that they are dangling like a disco ball for my abdominal region (what seems to have gotten big enough to play host to an CRAZY internal organ dance party).

This is me after.

But this is my trying to make light of something that is far more serious. My scar from this surgery is on my abdomen. It has not really exemplified what exactly happened to me. 

I had all those parts removed. My vagina was shortened. 

For the past 5 months, I have been terrified to think about what my new body was like. I knew and celebrated it being cancer free, but it changed. it changed in ways that make it very obvious.  

But these are things I cannot see. And because I can't see what my new vagina was like, I had created horrible images. These were courtesy of words like scar tissue and granulation that were tossed my way in my post surgical exams. 

Those are not pretty words, images of keloid and granulation in my mind as to what my new vagina looked like. I had images of puckers tough tissue reminiscent of the ears that a bullfighter cuts from a bull.  In my head, my new vagina was hideous. I was ashamed and horrified.

So, finally, after five months. I got up the courage to take a feel and see what it was like.

It wasn't hideous to the touch, there were no areas of puckered keloid tissue with granulation that I could identify. The tissue was smooth, taut, moist. Just what it should be, though missing the nose tip of a cervix.

I cried with a sense of relief.

TEDx yzpdqbil*

I have to admit, I am currently a little obsessed with TED talks.

It all started with this one talk - I think I saw it sometime in the fall of 2008;




I was floored, and moved, and thought "what a great way to put things out there".

And since this was new I kind of waited to see what it would bring. I made my mother watch it. I sent it to my friends, and have fondly referred to the talk and my reaction to it ever since.

I was not a Ted-aholic, though. I would only reach out to Ted videos when I referred to them.

But something changed.

As I was preparing to host a movie screening with panel discussion, and I could not find anyone willing to serve as master of ceremonies, I realized that the job would fall to me.

So, I began watching them to see what makes for a good speaker, what are things that are compelling, what things did I like.

I even made Squink watch them while he would take a bath, the bio-luminescence ones are super cool!

I think I am a mediocre speaker. I have some strengths, but plenty of weaknesses.

But after the event, I had the idea of a themed series of talks, something like the Ted talks I had been watching for cues.

It is possible:  https://www.ted.com/participate/organize-a-local-tedx-event

But I think the one for Phoenix is taken.

And they frown upon "themed" events.

And when I thought about it some more, I saw so many possibilities and had to chuckle at the notion that each one had at least one "rule violation".

I thought about one dealing with the many faces of cancer; from the physicians that find it, the pathologists that decipher it, the oncologists that treat it, the people who have endured it, the families of those who suffered it, the nurses who care for them, the scientists researching it.

It would be good, but it is a theme and violates the programming rules.

Then I thought about what it was like growing up as a third culture kid, and how cool it would be to get other people who grew up that way. I think my friend Doralice would have some wonderful insights, as would my friend Sparrow, and my friends Jeff and Erica. I think it would be interesting to give voice to that kind of experience. It is a bit unusual.

I have met so many interesting people, I would love to have an event to hear them talk... the Jivaro indian that had to flee his tribe because he wouldn't convert, the people who started putumayo, the circus people, the rodeo folks, singers, entrepreneurs of the ridiculous, those off grid (the hardest to organize), photographers, movie stars, cartoonists in the golden era, explorers, survivors, hedonists, narcissists, and so on.

That got me to thinking about what would happened if I was told I had to give a Ted talk...  kind of talk could I give? what would it be about?

My ideas for Ted events is large.... but the list of things I feel I would be qualified to talk about is pretty non-existent.

I suppose I could talk about how being diagnosed with cancer was life changing in some spectacularly subtle ways... or what it was like being born to a bullfighter father and an explorer mother, though that is really their stories. About being a child of divorce (booooooring).  What it was like managing a high stress pregnancy, most of which was spent on bed rest (gag me).

At this point in my life, I think I would talk about why I think vaccines are important, from a theoretical view, and cultural view, and prevention view, a mothers view, a survivors view,

What would your Ted talk be about?









*stands for examine your zipper, pretty darn quick, before I look (a childhood phrase)

Day 1 - 40DOW - viewpoints on vaccines

This morning was a struggle. 

I am trying my damnedest to get this to happen:

If you can RSVP for a Phoenix event click here.

I struggle because I want it to be successful 

The team I am working with has been UNBELIEVABLY supportive... but it is so hard to get buy in from other folks.

I struggle with that.

But it, my sense of struggling, may have been that I had an unscheduled visit to my oncologist today. 

Bleeding.

Something I am not supposed to be doing at this point.

So I went in and saw my doctors nurse practitioner. Who performed a biopsy. 

I have had biopsies before, in that area...  it hurt like a motherf*&%#r. 

Even though she told me that it was my job to assume it was due to scar tissue, she also told me it was her job to rule out recurrence. She reassured me that it looked like granulation (BTW - don't Google it).

What makes this situation even crazier is that the woman who did my biopsy is also a woman who will be on the panel for the movie screening.

Following up on the fact that I am helping to host a conversation about a preventable cancer
and that one of the panelists will have seen my girly-bits, I just got word who a second panelist will be and.... guess what??????

She has seen my girly bits too.

She was there when my son was born, as in the room... standing right between my husband and my mother.

So, I am trying to find the beauty of all of this. So, "this" being a weird place in my life (waiting for biopsy results) the week before I am helping host an event. The event which happens to be about something that most likely got me into the biopsy situation in the first place.

Anyway, the big shift for me has been to try and be kinder, gentler, more gracious... and yet stay my own person. Hard to do when you are in pain.

I lay there waiting for the biopsy, pretending to be under a fancy kitchen heat lamp

The biopsy was really painful, it still hurts as I type this some 12 hours later.

I still have so much to be grateful for, But it is kind of nerve wracking to be in my position, again… you know, waiting for results. Not the most fun place to be.

Anyway, after my ridiculously painful “procedure” I yelled out “fuck, that hurts” and immediately apologized and lay on the exam table, in tears, for a while. The nurse practitioner who took the biopsy was so very kind and seemed very distressed by my reaction.

I was pretty shocked by it too. It was, however, really painful. I have had biopsies of my girly bits before, without any numbing agent, and it was nothing like this.

At one point, during the second “grab” for tissue I screamed out “oh fuck that hurts”, and then immediately apologized. I am generally not one to curse much… I was embarrassed.

I lay on that exam table, tears streaming down my face, trying to get back to a normal breathing, staring at the bright light above me wishing there was something like a rainbow pooping unicorn to look at…

The nurse practitioner held my hand, asked me how I was feeling, helped me get some of my ibuprofen and drink it down. She seemed very concerned. All very kind considering that she had just learned she would be speaking at the HPV movie thing and that I was involved.

After my breathing got back to normal and the tears stopped falling down my face, she told me to lay there as long as I needed. She, and the other NP with her, quietly left the room. I lay on that exam table, and the tears came back.

It was a pity party I suppose. I lay there crying and trying to remember to be thankful that this was an experience in which I had had tremendous luck. No chemo. No radiation. a tumor the size of a grain of salt.

I lay there looking at the light above me. Trying to make it something more than just a light, making a distraction from the pain in my internal surgical site and the pain in my heart.

My heart did hurt, I had a vaccine preventable disease.

Let me say that again, I was diagnosed with a vaccine preventable disease.

One that would have prevented everything, a sub-total hysterectomy, worry, agony… and today’s darn biopsy.

It is a vaccine preventable disease.

Granted, I was born before this miracle vaccine was developed. But it is a vaccine preventable disease.

And as I ran through a list of people I do not particularly care for, not one of them and not one of their children were eligible for my wanting them to suffer what I had suffered through, I AM suffering through.

Vaccinate your children. In some cases yourself. Your boys. Your girls. This alternative is not fun. not fun at all. The HPV vaccine is good for kids aged 9 to adults aged 26.

It is a vaccine preventable disease.

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