Thanks for your patience and emails of support while this blog has been neglected. Quite a few of you have asked me what has been going on with me and what my recent surgery was for. I thought it was about time I gave you the full story. Here goes!
About a month ago, I received some terrifying news from a specialist physician who I had gone to see regarding bouts of severe abdominal pain. During my examination, he found a large cyst on one of my ovaries and suspected possible ovarian cancer. He wanted me to have blood tests the same day.
In a state of shock, I drove myself to the pathology lab, where I found my sister waiting for me, also pale and worried. We comforted each other and tried to convince one another that the cause was something else. When I didn't hear back from the specialist immediately, I put things out of my mind, comforted by the words of his receptionist who said when I called to follow up after a week that
"If the results had been bad, he would have called you by now".The next day, the specialist called me. My blood had come back with high markers for ovarian cancer and he wanted to hand over my case to a surgeon he knew at the Sydney Cancer Center, 6 hours drive away. The surgeon would call me to arrange emergency surgery, he said. I was completely devastated and my husband Jerry and I spent the next 2 days in a stupor, convinced I only had months to live. During those hellish days, the same thought kept going through my head -
"I'm only 39 years of age and I'll never get to see my 3 year old son grow up". The surgeon (
Dr Selvan Pather) called me 2 days later and asked me to make the trip to Sydney the following week for pre-op tests and examination. During that call he reassured me that high markers for ovarian cancer did not necessarily mean I had ovarian cancer. I felt all the air rush out of me and clutched like mad to a tiny glimmer of hope. Could it be possible my specialist had gotten it wrong? I must've sobbed with joy in Jerry's arms for about an hour after that call. I'll never be able to thank my surgeon enough for the reassurance he gave us that day.
So on Monday 2nd July, we packed up the car and headed down to Sydney to stay at my sister's while awaiting my surgery on 6 July. During examination, my surgeon was even more reassuring and said that they saw a lot of cases like mine that turn out to be something much less sinister than cancer, like
endometriosis. Just the week before, a woman with blood markers for ovarian cancer ten times as high as mine turned out to have endometriosis and no cancer. According to his surgical assistant, the extreme pain I was in during the examination was also a strong indicator that endometriosis could be the cause. But they wouldn't know for sure until surgery and a frozen biopsy was taken on the cyst to test for cancer cells. Regardless, I would likely need a full
hysterectomy and if cancer was detected, a radical hysterectomy followed by chemotherapy and radiation.
The day of the operation dawned: Friday 6 July 2007. I was petrified but felt confident I was in good hands with my caring surgeons. Jerry would learn of the results of my biopsy and surgery before I would and I told him that while I was in recovery, I wanted him to give me the thumbs up sign if cancer was not detected and the thumbs down if it was. Next thing I knew I was in agonizing pain in my abdomen and groaning. I was in recovery. I could vaguely see Jerry holding up his hands in the background and then I saw my surgeon smiling over me while I faded in and out of consciousness. He said:
"Kalena, everything went well - you had nasty endometriosis which took a long time to remove and we've given you a hysterectomy, but the tests showed that the tumor was benign. We've left one of your ovaries intact so you won't be thrown into early menopause". When my eyes finally focused, I could see Jerry grinning from ear to ear holding up both thumbs.
So now it's been just over 2 weeks since surgery. My recovery has gone well, (apart from a nasty chest infection that I picked up in hospital) and my surgeon called today to let me know the final pathology tests from my operation all showed negative results for cancer. I am so grateful to Dr Pather and his assistant Marcello for giving me my life back and for their caring bedside manner. I am still quite angry with my local specialist for not fully explaining to me the consequences of my blood tests, but I am thankful that he put me in touch with Dr Pather and even more thankful that I am pain free and cancer free.
I am now keen to get on with the rest of my life. There'll be no more 14 hour work days for me - my little scare gave me an attitude adjustment that life is just too precious to work it away. I'll be spending more time with my family and more time relaxing and doing activities that I enjoy. I love blogging and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into more search engine questions, but don't expect to see me online as often as I used to be. Life's too short to be stuck in front of a laptop.
So that's my story, thanks for reading this far. I'll leave you with my new favorite quote from Woody Allen who, in the film
Deconstructing Harry, said:
"The 3 most beautiful words in the English language are not 'I love you'. They are: 'it is benign' ".
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Yes, we've packed the removals van and we're heading over to our new home at Ask-Kalena.com tomorrow. All our archives will remain in place at this domain, but I'll be redirecting the blog home page within 48 hours so please update your bookmarks. We're also moving away from Blogger to a WordPress platform that offers much more in terms of template features and control.
