Cooties, be gone!

 December 2021 was a very significant month for me.

For most of 2021, I was having "feminine problems."  This wasn't particularly unusual for me, so I figured it would resolve itself in a couple months and everything would be copacetic again.  But time flew faster than I realized and suddenly it was month 7 with no resolution to my problem.  

In November, I went in for a check-up and explained my feminine woes to my doctor.  She prescribed a 10-day dose of meds to halt my monthly menace in its tracks.  Guess what, it didn't work.  

Next, I was referred for an ultrasound.  Had that on December 10th.  That was unpleasant; but informative.  Apparently, the lining (endometrium) in my baby pouch (uterus) was incredibly thick – twice as thick as would be needed for a baby.

Now things started to snowball.  The ultrasound led to a biopsy on December 15th.  The biopsy was extremely unpleasant.  The pathologist thought it looked suspiciously like cancer, but wasn't sure.  C-A-N-C-E-R?  But I didn't even feel sick!  I personally don't like the capital C-word, especially when applied to me.  So to keep my cool, my husband and I decided to call it Cooties instead.  I did a lot of Googling, and it sure sounded like I had Cooties.  But I was determined to wait until I knew for sure.

December 23, I had a visit with a GYN oncologist.  I always prefer honesty, so she laid it out for me – I had a 50-50 chance of having endometrial cancer.  She asked if I wanted to wait to have surgery.  Wait?  Wait for what?  I surely wasn't going to have a baby at my age.  Get those Cooties out! (I had told her about naming them "Cooties" and she thought that was funny.)

Then the snowball started to roll even faster.  Had a video visit with the anesthesia team on December 24th.  Had a Covid test and stress test on December 27th.

Then boom!  Surgery on December 29th.  Had to be at the hospital before the buttcrack of dawn.  I'm not a morning person, so that was a feat, in and of itself.  It took a couple of hours to get everything ready.  Things seemed to be more hectic, than in times past, with short-staffing and all.  But finally, I got to take a nice long nap while the surgeons did what they needed to do.

I was grateful that I had agreed to an abdominal block to delay pain.  I felt well enough to go home same-day.  There was no way I wanted to stay overnight in the hospital if I could help it!  Pain management turned out to be easy all during recovery.  What a relief!  

I love the way technology has evolved over the years.  These days, I can log on and read all the clinical notes from my surgery.  Fascinating stuff, those notes.  They used an "EndoCatch bag" to retrieve my big, grumpy baby pouch.  EndoCatch bag?  What? So I used "the Googles" to look that up and had quite a good giggle.  It looks like something you would use to scoop guppies out of a fish tank.  Or in this case, scooping Cooties.

From my childhood, I remember my mom telling me that they tried for many years (12) to have a baby.  When she finally did get pregnant, she wasn't sure so she went to see the doctor.  The doctor jokingly told her that she was either having a tumor or a baby.  Which would she prefer?  Well, in my case, it was a tumor and it was almost the size of a softball!  Yikes!  Stupid Cooties!

The good news is that the Cooties were localized to the baby pouch.  No further procedures are needed.  I am grateful to the Lord and to the surgeons that everything was handled quickly and without complication.

Bye-bye, Cooties!  Don't let the door hit you on the way out!