Happy Anniversary, Cancer

It was a year ago tonight - Friday, July 31, 2015 - that I was told I had cancer. I didn't understand what the doctor was saying - she'd come into my small, curtained recovery stall after the D&C which was just supposed to stop excessive bleeding. I remember she said something like, "We found sarcoma. There was a lot of white stuff." I think I asked what she meant and she probably said "Cancer." She said they were moving up my planned hysterectomy from a month out to a couple of days.

At the same time, I found out later, the surgeon - gynecological oncologist Dr T - was telling my husband the same thing in the waiting room. Dr T told him it was bad, serious.

I stayed in recovery for awhile, then they moved me upstairs to a regular hospital room. I think it was in the women's wing, the labor and delivery section. This was just temporary - I think they were trying to decide when to do surgery. The nurses said I might stay overnight.

In the end they let me go home, with a surgery date of Tuesday, August 4.

The weekend was a blur. I was in a lot of pain - apparently the D&C had disrupted things enough that I had major blood clots, the size of golf balls, and incessant bleeding. My mind was whirling and also blank. So much uncertainty - no one in my family had ever had cancer that I knew of. I hadn't had any close friends with cancer. Just one friend back in Texas with breast cancer, but I was so far away I wasn't aware of what all was happening to her.

I don't know what my husband was feeling. This was his first experience with cancer too, I think. He said he didn't think I would die during the surgery, he wasn't afraid of that.

I had CT scans on Monday, the day before surgery, to see if the cancer had spread beyond the uterus. I remember filling out my Advance Directive, giving instructions to the doctors in case I went into cardiac arrest and they needed to make life-saving choices. I didn't want to be in a vegetative state. I didn't want to be kept alive by artificial means. My husband found two people to be witnesses for the AD.

I remember packing a bag for my stay. I didn't know what to take - how long I'd be there. Several days, they'd said. I took some books, and my iPad, and some loose clothes to wear home. And on Tuesday, we went to the hospital for my surgery.

A year ago tonight, my life changed so dramatically. It's still hard for me to believe it. Now, having gone through the chemo and the radiation - it seems like a whole other life. I don't know how I did all that and kept working full time, and smiling, and getting on with daily things.

The smiling - in so many of the photos from that time I'm smiling broadly. Did I really feel that confident, that invincible, even though I'd had major surgery and a huge cancerous piece taken out of me? Even though I'd been given a scary diagnosis with a bad prognosis?

Was I in so much denial? My therapist says the denial got me through those times, that without it I may have just curled up into a ball and not been able to keep functioning mostly normally.

I projected a positive image to those who asked about me. Did I feel that positive about it all? Or did I just feel so much better with the cancer removed from my body?

I'm not as positive now. I live my life much as I did before the C word took me down a different path. But I live with a shadow over me, a shadow with weight that presses down on my shoulders and reminds me, "Only 43% live to the 5-year mark."

My parents both died many years ago, my mother-in-law died several years ago. My aunts and uncle, gone. Death is not new to me.

I've been suicidal in the past, never actually trying anything but entertaining thoughts and even making plans a couple of times. Each time, obviously, I chose to keep living.

But a year ago, I realized that the choice might be made for me. And that's a whole different feeling.

One year ago, a few words changed my life so much. "You have cancer.