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.