Another yummy smoothie

Pre-op Abdominal CT Scan, time to drink another "smoothie".

Never get used to drinking this thing, good thing Southpaw doesn't have any taste buds.

Spawn of Hal

Every good production needs a sequel.

Treatment:  The Spawn of Hal

Opening montage of our heroine rebuilding her life over the past year and a half.  She is getting her strength back.  Enjoying life and all her favorite activities.  Back out on the softball field, basketball court, golf course, and in the water surfing and boarding.  Working full time again.  Life is good.  Doctor visits going well, blood work looking good, scans looking good.  But, the fight against cancer is never really over.  Nothing like a sprinkling of cancers cells in my female parts to be a giant buzz kill.

The fibroids.  Like many women, I had uterine fibroids for some time.  They are noncancerous growths of the uterus that often appear during childbearing years.  They showed up on scans that were done before my breast cancer surgery.  There were also several small polyps in my uterus as well.  The gynecologist did an endometrial biopsy at that time and the results were negative.  When my oncologist put me on the Tamoxifen, he said we would keep an eye on the fibroids as they have a tendency to grow in patients on this drug.  In April, the first sign came in the form of a little spotting of blood one day.  Keeping in mind, my body has been forced into a post-menopausal state after chemotherapy so any blood is not a good sign.  I had my regularly scheduled check-up in May with my oncologist.  I told him about the spotting and he said I needed to get a check-up with a gynecologist and it was time for another ultrasound to check on the fibroids.  A couple of days after my check up with my oncologist, the spotting came back and was pretty consistent for almost a week.  I made an appointment with the gynecologist.  She found a large cyst on my cervix (about 3.5cm) and sent it to pathology to be tested.  She also did another endometrial biopsy.  A couple of days later, she informed me that both the cyst and the biopsy tissues had cancer cells on them (the spawn of Hal).  A few days after that conversation, I met with oncology gynecologist.  We talked more about where the cancer cells were found.  They were on the outside of the cyst and the outside of the lining of the uterus.  She informed me that I would need a hysterectomy and since my cancer was hormone based she would also like to take the ovaries and fallopian tubes.  I told her that I didn’t want to have any more surgeries so it would be best to take everything this one time.  She will also need to harvest a few lymph nodes from the abdomen area to determine if the cancer cells have gone beyond the female region.  She assured me that it would only be a minimal amount of lymph nodes this time and I shouldn’t have the same effects as when they took them from my arm.  This is good to hear, it was a long road to get the lymphedema in my arm under control.  She will be doing a laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy.  If all goes well, I will spend one night in the hospital and be back to normal routines in a couple of weeks.  The recovery time to be back to all my activities will depend on how my body heals, anticipating about six weeks.

So now it is time to have as much fun before the surgery.  So off to the golf course and into the water I go.