On March 12th, I went in for a 2nd surgery. The surgeon ended up finding a 2nd tumor on my other ovary and with Matt's permission cut each of my ovaries in half. He also took something off the surface of my uterus and sprayed some kind of fluid around in my abdomen. The severed ovaries that were extracted were sent to a pathologist. It took 2 weeks to get the results back because the labs had to be sent to Harvard for a world expert to examine. He concluded I have Stage 2 Ovarian Cancer. This means the cancer has spread throughout my ovaries, possibly into the fallopian tubes, abdominal fluid, etc. This means I will have to have another surgery to take out all of my ovaries (at the least) and have more biopsies done. If it's determined the cancer has spread beyond the ovaries, chemotherapy will need to be done.
Here I am at LDS Hospital prior to surgery.
We had to check in at 6am, and I don't do mornings.
Recovery was a BEAST this go-around. It took a LOT longer than my first surgery. Every time I would get out of bed and try to walk around, I couldn't breath. My chest would get tight and my upper back would ache. I felt nauseated for a good two weeks as well.
Because I couldn't breath, the oncologist had me go to the instacare to be looked over. When I got there and told them of my symptoms, they told me I needed to go to the emergency room right away for fear of a blood clot in my lungs. They even offered an ambulance. (How nice, but no thank you.)
Once again, I found myself in the Riverton ER. I even had the same nurse.
I had an EKG and CT Scan done on me only to determine: my innards were inflamed.
Poor Matt - patiently waiting at the hospital.
A couple weeks later. My sweet mother in law knows an herbalist. The herbalist has a protocol to help cancer patients. I decided to take the herbs to help my body recover and hopefully avoid chemotherapy. Well... 10% of the people that take Lomatium (a plant the helps your immune system and flushes out toxins from your body) develop a very severe rash. Lucky me, I fell into that 10%. I spent 7 days in the gall of bitterness nursing a swollen, blistered, itchy body. The rash spread to EVERY part of my skin. Every. Part. It was so uncomfortable that I would have nightmares of trying to get stuff off my belly - only to wake up in an itching fit and have to soak in an epsom salt bath in the wee hours of the night.
The rash went through stages - I call this the sunburned stage.
The swollen phase
The purple/blister phase (Matt told me I looked like an alien during this phase)
The itchiness all over my body phase (this was the longest and most annoying phase).
And this is how one mothers while bound to a bathtub. Pool Party!
The detoxing rash was at times unbearable, but I really believe it was my body's way of getting unwanted toxins out of my system. The herbalist explained it as a viral load leaving my body through my lymphatic system and out through the biggest organ of my body - the skin. Hoping this will not only slow the cancer growth, but aid in my overall health. What is kind of interesting is that the places on my body that were affected the worst were my ankles and wrists. In reflexology, a person's ovaries are located around the ankles and wrists. Coincidence? Probably not.
