Part 5: Spoiler - It Wasn't Endo

Part 5: Spoiler - It Wasn’t Endo

The morning of October 14th was emotional and a bit of a blur:

4:30am Wake up, get ready, take care of Honeydew

5:00am Head down to Northside Hospital Atlanta (no coffee, mind you…)

5:45am Arrive and check in

6:15am Get taken back for pre-op

7:00am Patrick finally got brought back to hangout with me while I (“bravely”) got my IV (just kidding; I complained the entire time) and waited for the anesthesiologist to check in and give me "happy juice" (I believe the words I said once she gave it to me was, "Woahhh")

8:30am Laparoscopy time

11:30am Wake up in recovery

Before I was taken to the OR, I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Cantuaria, my oncologist and surgeon, about the MRI results and his final thoughts before going in. He told us that while the radiologist saw the three cysts on my ovaries and some signs of cancer, he assured us that late stages of Endometriosis can also look like this in an MRI. However, he had plan just in case he found something else. While this made me nervous, I fully trusted him and judgement. I knew that regardless of what happened, this team was ready to make me healthy no matter what.

When I woke up from surgery 3 hours later, the first thing I asked for "my" Patrick. When he walked in, he had the sweetest, saddest smile on his face. I knew something wasn’t quite right. He told me that I was under for two hours, but things didn’t exactly go as planned. The cysts that Dr. C expected to remove turned out to be Serous Borderline Ovarian Tumors* - Stage 3b. One of the tumors was encasing my right ovary which meant that he had to do an extra incision on my side to remove my ovary completely (making my "cut count" as I call it go from 3 to 4). Luckily, he was able to just remove the tumor on my left ovary, but it still remained covered in disease, along with my cervix, tubes, and other organs. He also found multiple smaller tumors sitting on top of various spots within my abdomen (“sprinkled like snow”). He was able to remove many of them, however, they were too small and there were too many for him to be able to remove all of them.

Needless to say, I was in a bit of a shock. We started this journey trying to get pregnant, and ended up coming out with cancerous tumors and one less ovary. I’m honestly still trying to wrap my mind around it all. There was nothing more I could do but try to absorb it all as we got ready to go home and I prepared myself for recovery.

*For more information on Borderline Ovarian Tumors, please visit https://www.ovacome.org.uk/borderline-ovarian-tumours . While there are other resources available, this article helped me understand what was happening in terms that a non-medical professional could understand. Roughly 2 in every 100,000 women are diagnosed with BOT.