July 19, 2011

This blog post comes to you from my hospital room at Overland Park Regional Medical Center. I checked in at 5:30 this morning for an emergency hysterectomy. I've been taking the Tamoxafin for about 6 weeks (thats the estrogen-blocker to stop my hormone production and put me into menopause). Dr. Burt had warned me that the side effects would be pretty bad, and I had myself all psyched up and ready, but I haven't had any side effects at all (only thing is that I'm having mini-periods every few weeks). I was thinking I was just really lucky, but I went to see Dr. Mirabile (OBGYN) just to be safe. Well he was concerned that maybe my body is fighting the Tamoxafin so he took a biopsy of my ovary to test my hormone levels. Well, a "normal" woman's estrogen levels are typically 100 - 400, depending on her cycle and a woman on Tamoxafin typically has levels between 10 - 50. With my cancer being as hormone sensitive as it is, they want my numbers to be around 15. Well, they aren't...they are 700. Basically my ovaries are over-achievers! Dang show-offs! :-) So long story short, they had to hurry up and take everything out so that my body can't produce estrogen anymore.

The surgery went pretty well...they were able to do it laprascopically with one small incision in my belly button, so my recovery should be much easier! They found a cyst on one of my ovaries, but it was benign and they were able to get rid of it without any problems. I'm pretty sore and swollen, but hopefully it will get better in a few days. I'll be in the hospital over night, and they'll ship me home tomorrow!

I had a PET scan done on Friday just to make sure I didn't have any cancer cells develop with all the craziness that's been going on, and unfortunately they found a spot on my pelvis that's cause for concern. I'll have to have a biopsy of my bone done later this week to determine if it's cancer or not, so I'm soliciting everyone for prayers, prayers, prayers! If it turns out that my cancer is back then they will start me immediately on radiation. It's a different kind than what they did last time, this one would be with a machine called Cyberknife. Since it's just one localized area, this machine can pinpoint it exactly and they zap it with a very high dose of radiation. Dr. Burt said that more chemo could possibly be on the table after that, but that we will just wait and see how everything turns out.

So for now it's just more waiting...