TheBanyanTree: No....and Yes

[Sachet]

I've had this post bouncing around in my mind for a few weeks, but it 
was still too close to the situation to write about it. Now I need to be 
all done with it, because (thankfully) my life has a new focus. And 
mainly, I still need to let some family and friends know and this post 
is my template. It can be a conundrum...the explaining to friends and 
family. You want their support and concern, but it also takes a lot of 
energy to reassure and provide information.

Laura's post really helped me to settle my thoughts into place since my 
summer has been so very similar to hers. I had been thinking of it as my 
summer of "NO".

NO =  you can't go hiking in the mountains whenever you wish.

NO =  you have to stop biking with your brother.

NO =  you should no longer walk with your neighbor Patsy up and down the 
hills of your neighborhood.

NO =  you can't lift anything over 5 lb.'s

NO =  you really should minimize the amount of times you climb the 
stairs in your own house.

As of May 23rd my life instantly and unexpectedly consisted of NO to 
just about everything and yes to many things I would have emphatically 
chosen to say No to forever,

I could have done without the feeling of dread when my family 
physician's office called after a week of multiple tests to tell me that 
she wanted to talk to me in person, to "discuss" the results. It would 
have been less frustrating if I hadn't had to help her deal with her own 
denial as we discussed the results. I had done my research and knew that 
even though she kept insisting that a laparoscopy would be possible, 
everything I had read clearly stated that when cysts are 6cm in size and 
there are more than one, well, a laparoscopy is simply not feasible. 
Waiting for her to go over my test results with her own 
gynecologist/college friend was emotionally draining, as she confirmed 
what I already dreaded hearing. Major surgery was rapidly appearing on 
my horizon.

Most of all, I would have really preferred to have bypassed the feeling 
of utter terror when I was sent to the oncology surgeon. Naturally, I 
was deeply scared for myself, but the terror that felt like ice in my 
veins, stemmed from how it would affect my children. Losing my dad a few 
years ago to lung cancer was a nightmare experience for them and I 
hated, with every fiber of my being, having to walk into the cancer 
center because I knew how that reality would affect them.

So I didn't tell them where I was going, just that I was seeing a 
specialist. Details could wait for later.

Dr. Pippitt was incredible! I have never, even in working in the field 
of oncology, ever met a man with such gentle compassion and empathy for 
the questions and unspoken fears of his patients. I've also never placed 
a doctor on a pedestal, because that has always seemed unrealistic and 
also unfair, since they are human and fallible, just as we all are as 
human beings. But, for the first time in my life I easily see how it 
happens... that a doctor impacts your life to so remarkably, so 
distinctly, you can't help but place him up there.

He was honest, forthright and yet somehow encouraging. Surgery was 
scheduled for June 13th, with no option for the small unobtrusive bikini 
cut I hopefully requested, because he explained that he had to be able 
to access my entire abdomen for possible cancer staging. I didn't 
frantically embrace the ramifications of that possibility, but I 
couldn't ignore them either. My way of coping prior to the surgery was 
to organize anything and everything, to the nth degree.

After my surgery, I woke up in the surreal world of that unique 
anesthetic haze, and was instantly anchored by the strong warm 
reassuring feeling of my surgeon tightly gripping my hand, gently but 
firmly rubbing my arm and repeatedly telling me that no cancer was 
found. He intuitively provided an invaluable gift by taking the time to 
be there at such a crucial moment.

Morphine is a wonderful thang, but if I never have to experience it 
again, I will be more than fine with that. It's hard to be convincingly 
coherent whilst alternately floating off into loopy land and discovering 
the reality that pain has thresholds you couldn't possibly have imagined 
existing. Thankfully, I was lucid enough to comprehend that although the 
surgery was extensive in some unexpected ways, in the most important way 
that we were all expecting, it was not. "No" became my new favorite word.

NO = NO cancer present, even when all the final pathology reports 
returned two days later.

NO = chemo is not necessary.

NO = you don't have to remain in the hospital as long as predicted.


"Yes" soon became the very bestest of words ever spoken.

Yes - If you listen and heed the advice of your surgeon, you can expect 
a full recovery.

Yes - we are very serious about resting and letting your body heal for 
the *entire* 6 weeks post-op. (How my Dr. managed not to roll his eyes 
and laugh when I asked him (pre-op) if I could do this, that and the 
other thing if I felt up to it at 4 weeks post-op, I'll never know. 
Geez, I felt like such an idjit later on. <g>)

Yes - you will able to hike when the trees are blazing into the colors 
you love as autumn sends its welcome chilly temps.

Yes - you can once again embrace the "pure joy of arbitrary passions". I 
came across that phrase this week and it captured my complete attention. 
They can range from the small, simple, joyful awareness of how rain 
drops sound falling late at night in the corn field (it's a whisper-y 
soft sound I'd never heard before) to the encompassing excitement and 
trepidation of beginning a new job and feeling so passionate about it 
that you feel like you're going to burst!

My list of things yet to experience in life was long & varied before May.

It's now considerably longer.

Enthusiastically so.

....Sachet

[I decided that if I had a sig file atm, it would be something else I 
recently read.
Live boldly, take risks...make somebody say, "What the hell was THAT all 
about?!?"]

;-)