Just got a pre-cancerous melanoma removed on Saturday. The dermatologist had said “when you’re pregnant things grow so be sure to check in with me” and voila…she found something. Well, that’s why I go. This is the third one that’s gotten cut out of me. I take cancer or it’s possibility very seriously. Coming up on Thursday is the three year anniversary of the general check up appointment when the doctor, agreeing with my Chinese doc and acupuncturist, felt things weren’t quite right around my neck and that I should get a scan. 95% of the time it’s nothing…and silly me, I believed her. Of course it wasn’t fine. And I had to have a 6 hour surgery to remove two tumors and my entire thyroid which meant that the treatment after surgery was more aggressive. Basically I drank radiation. When you don’t have a thyroid you don’t have a metabolism, and without a metabolism your stops working. There are drugs to take that can give you a metabolism. The trick is knowing how much. Every person is different and it is not dependent on weight or height. Basically you feel like crap until the meds are adjusted which takes a few months.
And what does this have to do with fertility? Well the day I got the go ahead to start my first IVF cycle after all the tests etc. was the day I found out I had cancer. I was on the phone with the IVF doctor when the cancer doctor called. Too much. Really. After my surgery the first thing I asked when I could think was can I still do my IVF cycle. I’m lying in bed barely able to speak unable to really move my head and all I could do was focus on that. When the cancer doctor said no I’d have to wait six months because I’d have to do some aggressive follow up treatment since the tumor had touched muscle I just cried and cried and cried.
In fact it’s safe to say I never really dealt with the cancer because I was much more focused on wanting to have a baby. Now that we are pregnant (25 weeks) I guess I’m finally wondering to myself if I actually dealt with everything I went through. I don’t know that I have.
Maybe some of you know what I mean – I mean about not dealing with other big huge things in life because fertility/infertility completely takes over. Has that happened to anyone else?
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In a way . . . I feel like I have dealt with IF along the way, but now that it looks like we may have a viable pregnancy - and at least for now I am no longer trying to get pregnant - grief has settled in again. I think in many ways I haven't really dealt with the pain and the losses because I was busy trying to conceive.
Funny how things sneak up on you, isn't it? It's been so long for me but I still remember a car ride home from our RE several months ago when hubby was teasing me about my fear of needles and I guess prodded a little too hard. All this imagery from so long ago came flooding back to remind me that sometimes you deal with things, you cope, you survive, you make it through. It's like adrenaline pushes you past it. But then when the immediate danger is over, all of the feelings come rushing back.
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