I Am Relieved--or I Think I Am

We met with Dr. Nieves at the Cancer Institute the following week. At first I was a bit uncomfortable with this doctor; even with my Puerto Rican background, I do not speak Spanish and I had a difficult time understanding everything he was saying. My mother on the other hand was fluent in Spanish as an adolescent.  She communicated with the doctor easily and they even bonded over their mutual passion for photography.  The appointment lasted nearly 4 hours.  Let me tell you—it was a lot of information.  One quality I praise this doctor for the most who performed my second surgery is that he was so thorough and meticulous—a characteristic you want in a doctor, especially one about to perform surgery.  We learned what type of ovarian cancer was found in the pathology reports—dysgerminoma, a germ cell type of tumor.  It is a very rare type of ovarian cancer even amongst adolescents—dysgerminomas account for less than 1% of ovarian tumors overall.  The oncologist said there was no need to fret yet—there was only a 10-30% chance the cancer cells had spread to my lymph nodes or anywhere else in my body.  Dr. Nieves was leaning more towards 10%, since my surgeon who removed the tumor “looked around” my abdominal cavity and he saw nothing suspicious.  Nonetheless, a laparoscopic procedure would be required to take samples of my lymph nodes and look around for any more cancerous cells.  I was told the surgery would be minimally invasive and I possibly would be able to go home the same day if all went well.

I was optimistic about this next operation.  My mother and I drove back down to South Jersey in high spirits; after meeting with Dr. Nieves, I wasn’t very concerned with having cancer.  If anything, I had convinced myself already that nothing else would be found.  I would have to simply deal with having two more miniscule incisions on either side of my larger, Caesarian-section-looking incision.  These marks would all be low on my abdomen and I knew they wouldn’t bother me too much.  My only cause for anxiety was not being able to schedule the surgery right away due to lack of availability of an operating room for such a procedure.  I was kind of on edge the next few days; not being able to tell my boss when I would be back to work was not what I had planned.  I had already been out of work a week and a half at this point and knew my vacation days were just about used up.

At this point, 9 days after the first surgery, I was feeling much better.  Though it was becoming the end of the second week out of work and I still had no date for the second surgery.  I didn’t want another weekend to go by without calling my boss—but what should I say?  I wasn’t sure how to properly handle this situation.  Should I go back to work for a few days?  Or would that be unwise to go back for a few days, only to leave all of a sudden if I got the phone call to clear my schedule for surgery?

What's an Oncologist?

I was told I needed to see an oncologist.  I didn't even know what an oncologist was at the time.  My surgeon recommended a Dr. Wilberto Nieves, a gynological oncologist associated with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Robert Wood Johnson.  I made an appointment for the following week.  We left my surgeon and headed to my apartment to bring more clothes to my mother’s house.  I cried on the way home, all of a sudden scared for myself.  I wasn’t sure what was happening or why it was happening, but from the serious tone my surgeon took for the rest of that appointment, I knew my problems weren’t over.  Nobody in my family had ever had cancer, and I did not understand how cancerous cells sprang up in my young adult body.  How long had they been there, and why?  What did I do wrong?  It turns out, there was no answer to these questions.

I cried in the car on the way home from New Brunswick that day, but only briefly, and perhaps only because my mother insisted on calling my father and telling him the news on speakerphone.  My father suffered from a severe stroke three years back, and ever since has become more emotional and sentimental as one of the side affects.  He immediately began crying on the phone—silently, but I am too familiar with his characteristic silent sobbing to know better.  I did not become physically upset about the possible predicament I was in until I heard his weeping on the phone.  *A side note about ‘crying’ in general: I am the type of person who needs to know solid facts before I react to anything, and there was too much unknown at this point.  After all, the tumor was removed and that could mean all the cancer was out already!  It was possible my problems were over, and that my body was over this turmoil.  Who knew.  However if I see or hear one of my parents crying, which until recently was a rare occurrence, I in turn react and start tearing up.  Furthermore, since I have become seriously ill, I have become much more easily triggered emotionally by things people say and do around me.  In fact, I would say I hardly ever cried before, perhaps a few times a year.  Something as simple as my sister taking notice that my nausea (from the chemo) is especially overwhelming me and bringing me a hot cup of ginger tea will cause my eyes to well up with tears, just because, it astounds me that someone, especially a teenager, can be that nurturing and attentive.  And the fact that I have never been that nurturing to her makes me feel like a terrible person who really needs to re-evaluate how I treat people, especially those who care for me.