Friday, May 16, 2008

Surgery in my future

I have a couple of appointments coming up next week. I see my oncologist for a 6 month check up on Monday and I see the gynocologist surgeon on Thursday. I had another period that was a normal one for once. Not too incredibly heavy or anything. I never know how it's going to be but I always prepare for the worst just to be on the safe side. In the midst of it, I got fed up. I got my courage up and called the surgeon and said that I wanted to schedule a time to do an oopherectomy. Doing this would take out my ovaries and I wouldn't be taking tamoxifen anymore. It would also put me into permanent menopause and I would start taking different cancer drugs, potentially better than what I was taking before.

The surgeon's office put a potential sugery date of June 9th down. Then they called back and want me to come talk with the doctor before hand so she can get reaquainted with me and talk with her and make sure that's what I want to do. So there is the slight possibility this could turn into a hysterectomy, but I'm not thinking so.

I have many reasons for wanting this surgery. I want to prevent every bit of estrogen from having a chance to give me cancer. I want to never have to deal with wondering if this month's period is going to be a heavy nasty disaster or a normal one. I can handle the hot flashes and what comes with that, I've done it before, doing it again is no big deal. I don't want to have to go to the doctor's office to have a biopsy wondering if cancer has come back in a different area.

Mostly I'm scared of cancer again. I know I can handle it. But I've seen my friends on support boards get cancer again, either a recurrence or it appears somewhere else. Not everyone makes it and it's so damn hard to watch a friend die. That happened recently with two lovely wonderful ladies with little children. Those children will not have their mothers around and may not even remember them. I don't want that to happen to my children. I want to be around forever and drive them crazy. So I guess you could say it's selfish reasons that I want it. I'm scared and I don't want to deal with periods.

But I see my oncologist on Monday and let him know what is going on and get his opinons. My surgeon said she would do whatever I wanted. I just hope it all works out.

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