Part 2: 160

Part 2: 160

Throughout the week, I tried to get in contact with my doctor multiple times to go ahead and schedule the surgery. I was eager to get this done and over with. However, when I didn’t hear back from her by Wednesday evening, I knew something wasn’t quite right.

Thursday morning during my planning period, I finally got the call from my OB/GYN - my CA125 was high, too high for her to be able to perform the surgery. She expected it to be under 100 U/mL; I came back at 160 U/mL.

“I’m referring you to a Gynecologic Oncologist.”

Oncologist. Did I hear that correctly? Did she just say I needed to see a cancer specialist? I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I was frozen sitting in a chair in a dark, empty classroom. I thought this was supposed to be easy? I thought this was supposed to just be Endometriosis? And now my doctor is saying that she can’t perform the surgery because my level was out of her realm and we needed to have a doctor who is prepared to “handle things” in surgery in case it turns out to be something else like cancer? She could hear the panic in my “okay”s and continued to try to reassure me that she still believes that it’s just a really bad case of Endo, but just wanted to take precautions. I couldn’t do anything, but say okay and take down the information she was giving me rapid-fire:

Thursday, September 26th at 11:00am with Dr. Cantuaria at University of Gynecologic Oncology in the Atlanta Northside Hospital.

In the span of just a few days, surgery went from optional to necessary and soon.