Pretty great news!

 If you remember, back to the beginning of this Blog, it began because I sent out 15-20 texts saying "My endometrial biopsies are negative!" And by the time most of you had received my text, I had received a call from the surgeon to tell me that my other masses needed to be removed and biopsied and that there were still lots of question marks. I was too disappointed to send out another group of texts, so I started my blog, which has allowed me to tell my story once. 

So, today, I met with the oncologist and more questions have been answered. Of all of the "stuff" that was removed from my belly. The right and left ovaries, uterus, lymph nodes, gooey fat thing that I forget it's proper name, suspicious mass on my jejunum... all of these are fully negative for cancer. Whoopee! 

The remaining question was regarding the mesenteric para-ganglion mass that was fully removed and had clean edges, but it is a rare type of cancer that grows along areas with nerves and my follow-up today with the oncologist was to discuss this mass. 

So, the treatment for this type of mass is surgery, which, due to my ovarian torsion, I have already had. The torsion, as we suspected, was the canary in the gold mine. It had nothing to do with this small mass, but it sent out an alert, as it died and shriveled up, and the alert revealed the potentially harmful mesenteric mass.  I'm just lucky, I guess. 

So the Messy Mass (as I call it) has been identified, removed and that is all the treatment necessary for now. Every year, I will get a blood test to see if there are any hints of hormones released by this type of mass and every year I will get a CT scan with contrast to see if anything has shown up somewhere else. This follow-up will continue for the rest of my life. 

The treatment, if it shows up again, is surgical removal. I think the best part of the final review was that this type of cancer is not treated with chemo. I have vomited enough to make the thought of chemo just gag me. 

So, why did I use the word "pretty" and not "absolutely" great news? Well, at this moment, I am drinking the "wonder drink" that preps me for an upper and lower GI tomorrow. This is routine and was ordered by my "overly thorough" surgeon (who I love) when she saw that I hadn't had one for awhile.  She thought I should get one now, as I am already weak from surgery, 10 days NPO, readmission for a complication and haven't yet gotten back to a normal diet.  It is hard to refuse that sort of logic. So tomorrow, I will endure, what I hope will be a routine, no surprises, colonoscopy with upper GI series. 

I know it is possible that during this routine check, they could find something and I could be back in the biopsy world again, so I am holding my breath, drinking my Go-lightly and hoping that it is normal and the passage between my small and large bowel is big enough to allow me to eat salads again. 

So, yeah, pretty great news. Part of me thinks this has been one crazy path for something that may have been hanging out in my body for years. And another part of me thinks it is pretty lucky to get a heads-up years, maybe decades, before this cancer could grow and become threatening. 

So, I have been very lucky, and a little bit unlucky. 

I hope to close this chapter soon.