As each ceiling tile brought me closer to the OR, I repeatedly visualized jumping out of my hospital bed (open gown or not!) and hiding in a supply closet! The fact that I had been stuck watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Full House reruns beforehand only added to the surreal aura encompassing surgery day. By the time they brought me to the holding area, I was one TGIF flashback away from losing it!
Then my anesthesiologist arrived telling jokes, making the fact that I was about to be knocked out and cut open funny (the power of humor!). After three attempts at trying to put in my IV (smiling and asking if I left my veins at home that day), she said she was giving me something that would make me feel like I had had a drink or two and after that it was smooth sailing. I may or may not have also offered my uterus up again saying I had used that sucker up! The last thing I remember is being rolled into the OR, seeing giant UFO lights and then a mask being placed on top of me with the instructions to take a couple of breaths and then nothing.
I awoke crying. The nurses began asking if I was in pain. Being a little loopy from all of the drugs running through my system I responded, “No! I’m alive! I made it!” I was so relieved, the cyst that was causing me so much trouble was gone and I had made it through the surgery. Then I heard a couple of nurses refer to me as the exploratory surgery and I was beside myself trying to argue with them in my doped-up state. I insisted I had been going in for a cystectomy, they insisted an exploratory surgery had been done.
Again, the dead weight of dread set in the pit of my stomach that had been there for the past 8 months and I thought back to my preoperative appointment where they had told me they wouldn’t remove it if it looked cancerous. Instead I would be referred to a gynecologic oncologist to perform the surgery. So for the next hour I thought the worst, until the surgeon phoned and explained that she hadn’t found anything abnormal at all during the surgery despite the fact that three separate imaging reports had placed a dermoid cyst the size of a plum on my right ovary. She seemed as perplexed and confused as I, but of course spun it positively because, “Hey, at least everything looked normal!”
Hanging up the phone with no better understanding of just where my cyst had disappeared to or how, I began recalling the day’s events. I had arrived at the hospital at exactly 5:30 am as they had told me, along with about 50 other lucky souls awaiting their surgeries. We sat together, each attempting to block out the reality with the morning news, which was repeated until 9:30 am, when I was finally called into my room and prepped for surgery. As the nurse began her barrage of tests and questions, she asked me if I was in any pain. Strangely, I wasn’t. For the past eight months up until surgery day if she had asked me that I’d have said yes, but that morning, there was nothing. I kick myself now for not insisting on an MRI or another ultrasound because I could’ve avoided the whole mess, but alas everything is as it must be.
So why is it so odd that a cyst on the ovaries would disappear? Isn’t that a normal occurrence in a woman’s life? It can be, but a dermoid cyst specifically is a cyst composed of solids and fluids, so that unlike most cysts that come and go with a woman’s cycle, a dermoid cyst rarely ruptures and when it does, leaves evidence and also creates a condition called peritonitis, or inflammation of your peritoneum (the lining of your abdomen) because of its composition. Which again leaves me to wonder, how in the world it disappeared without a trace?!
This is where my faith steps in. I had been praying for months that it would just go away and I would feel like me again. The dermoid caused everyday life to be miserable between the nausea, pain and fatigue. It was a struggle for me to maintain my smile and household routine, especially with my three young children. My mother and sisters also knew about it and prayed for healing as well. Is it a miracle? Or is this simply one more thing science doesn’t know how to explain, but has a logical explanation? I’m not sure myself, but I do know that now I feel whole again. Now I feel like me and it’s not something I plan on taking for granted in the future!
As for the recovery time from surgery, since it was laparoscopically done, I was only left with two small incisions on the sides of my lower abdomen and one in my belly button that weren’t too painful. The most painful part was the collected gas (which they fill the abdomen with in order to see better) that took about 3 days to exit my body. Every time I tried to lay down I felt like combustion was eminent and was plagued by burping/hiccup fits! Other than that, I was a little sore, but avoided the pain meds as I had read they mucked up internal plumbing and felt better by the week’s end. I had the surgery on a Monday and on Friday I was at an all day interview!
I have a post-op appointment that I am considering ditching because I have always viewed modern medicine as a gamble. Sometimes they know what they’re doing and talking about and sometimes, as in my case, they just don’t. Every God, every belief has fallibility, including our modern God of Science. Why medical miracles and extraordinary occurrences don’t make every single human being contemplate the nature of the world around them, I’ll never know. I do know however that life is beautiful, mysterious and precious. This experience has confirmed it and now more than ever (not that I wasn’t prone to before) I find myself getting sentimental over the blue of the sky or the smell of my almost one year old’s hair (where does the time go?). Having faced my mortality again all I can say is alhumdillah for this life, it truly is the most amazing, fragile gift we’ll ever receive.
JAK & All the Best,
Christen
