Slowing to a Stop

​October 10, 2019

My cell phone begins ringing. I feel the buzz of my watch announcing the call. The caller ID notification shows McDonald Murrmann Center for Wellness & Health.

I think, ‘That’s odd. I was just there yesterday for the pregnancy test.’ I answer my phone, “Hello?”

“Is this Averill?”

“Yes.”

“This is Meredith. I met and spoke with you yesterday about pregnancy. But,” she pauses for longer than necessary, “I just couldn’t let it go. I decided to dig in your chart.” She pauses again, “Did you ever have a follow-up with Dr. Donato after your surgery in November 2017?”

“No. I had to cancel the follow-up. My supervisor was on vacation and I couldn’t get off work.”

The surgery was November 30, 2017. The follow-up with Dr. Donato was scheduled for April 11, 2018. I figured if the biopsy results were bad they would have called prior to five months out. No news is good news, right? Besides, since then, I had gone in for my annual exam in November of 2018 and the pregnancy test yesterday. Nothing was said those times either. And yesterday Meredith said my chart looked good. Surely, if something were wrong someone from McDonald Murrmann would call me, and not wait a year-and-a-half.

Meredith continues her questions, “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”

“Your biopsy results came back as,” she began spouting strings of four-or-more syllable words, things I’ve never heard before. Words I’m sure if strung together correctly would conjure spells. She keeps talking, “Your cells came back larger than expected. Endometrial. Uterine lining. 40% chance.”

There! I understand more than five words.

“I don’t understand your vocabulary. What are you saying?”

“All of this means you have pre-cancer and you should have been getting D&C biopsies every three months for the past two years. It’s pre-cancer.”

I’m sitting at my desk at work. I scribble, “pre-cancer” in blue ink on my scratch paper. And then I scribble the words again over top of the original scribble. I keep scratching the words over top each other.

I sit there, watching my hand repeat the scribbles. It is around 1pm. The sun is so warm and bright streaming in through the skylight above my desk. Everything white is glowing: my papers, the desktop, my office walls, all glowing with a magnificent brightness. The sun on my back feels like the first day in Spring when the rays are strong enough to warm my skin through my clothes. I want to soak in the warmth, to sit there basking in the sun, to ignore the numbness creeping in that coincides with the audacity of fate. Time is slowing to a stop and yet my mind is racing. I feel like I am swimming through Karo syrup, backwards, trying to be me from five minutes ago.

I cannot exactly remember what Meredith said next. I think she asked if I was still there.

I’m pretty sure that I blurt out, “But, I just got married! How do I tell my husband of three weeks that I have pre-cancer?”

My gynecological surgeries are not a secret, I already explained to Jamie that over the past 17 years I had three D&Cs: dilation and curettage. One coinciding to remove a poly-binomial cyst from my right Fallopian tube. A second D&C with cyst removal from both my right and left ovaries. The third one in November of 2017 to scrape out a polyp. I had never actively tried to get pregnant.

Until we made the decision to start a family, I had been on birth control for a decade.

I told Jamie, “I’ve had a lot of surgeries. I’m older, it may not happen.”

He said, “Regardless, we will have a great life together.”

To beat all, none of these surgeries came with a diagnosis or a reason as to why it kept happening. Over the past 8 years it was paired with Dr. Donato constantly reminding me, “You’re fat.” Duh, everyone can see that. “Lose weight.” When I dropped 60 lbs, she didn’t even acknowledge it. “We need to decide to remove your uterus, when you think you are done with it,” without an explanation why.

On the other end of the phone, I hear Meredith talking, “You need to have emergency surgery, another D&C, as soon as possible. The surgery center will call you with a date.”

I ask and she tells me to continue with the plan from yesterday to include the prenatal vitamins, the ovulation and pregnancy tests, and the prescribed hormone to start my cycle. The surgery will just be additional.

Immediately my mind thinks, ‘How do I protect Jamie and my parents?’

I lead with having surgery and large cells.

I call Jamie.

I text my Mom.

The surgery center calls.

July 8, 2019 arrives.

For my 2017 surgery, Dr. Donato was an hour and a half late. My assigned nurse let me know, “We are just waiting on the doctor.” Through the curtain I could hear the nurses at that surgery center complain about her constant and notoriously late arrivals. I interject, “None of this is new. I’ve had to wait in an exam room for her for three hours, multiple times.”

This time I was expecting a repeat of Dr. Donato’s tardiness. To my absolute surprise she was present.

I explain to her, “In my previous surgery, you wrenched the shit out of my back. You put my back out. I was down for recovery for my back rather than the D&C. Please be careful with my back this time.”

She looked surprised that I would talk to her like that. Nobody else is going to be my advocate better than me. She mentions that she will use a back brace.

I also have a talk with the anesthesiologists.

I am wheeled into the surgery room. The doctors and crew are wearing what appear to be Columbia or North Face fleece jackets. The air feels like icicles.

My Mom is sitting next to my gurney, holding my hand.

I know the routine. I’ve done it three times before. In order to leave, I have to get up to pee. They need to make sure my plumbing is connected correctly.

I want to ask to go to the restroom, I can see the open door to the restroom from my recovery bay, but I start coughing, uncontrollably. The pain burns down the center of my chest. With each cough I feel the hollow burning of bronchitis.

I also have a splitting headache, but manage to tell the nurse that I need to pee.

She brings a bedpan and sets it next to me on my righthand side.

I do not know who she thinks I am, but even in my anesthetic stupor I know that I do not use port-a-potties unless it is a downright emergency. I am sure as hell not going to use a bedpan, in-front of everyone, especially when my legs are perfectly capable of walking the 10 feet to the toilet. I am certainly not as modest as I could be, but I have to draw the line and it is most definitely here.

I refuse the bedpan. Then, I turn my brain off and no longer hear her talking to me.

Mom tries to explain that something happened to me during surgery. My breathing messed up. It wasn’t good. She said, “It’s not the nurse’s fault that you are not allowed out of bed yet. That’s why you are coughing.”

I don’t respond. I hold it.

Dr. Donato comes by my recovery bay. She says she thinks the pre-cancer results from November 2017 are a fluke.

They put me in the wheelchair to leave and we make a pit stop in the restroom before heading home.

Once home, I make this Facebook post:

We wait for the biopsy results.