I guess any story of any type needs a beginning. So, here's this stories.
Back in March of 2015, Denise started to have a very weird, pinching sensation in her lower right quadrant. 5 years prior, Denise had gone through a hysterectomy that was caused due to endometriosis and she wasn't sure if it was something associated with that or just a pulled muscle. The pain did finally get bad enough one morning that we did run to the emergency room. While we were there, the doctors did do an ultrasound on the area and couldn't find anything. They gave her some medicine for the pain and sent us on our way. The pain came and went all summer. We also thought that it could have been the bed as well. But in late October, the pain got REALLY bad. So much so that she drove herself to the emergency room. After she got there and described the symptoms, the attending doctor ordered a CAT scan to get to the bottom of what was going on. The scan came back and a mass was found. The attending surgeon to the ER also looked at it and knowing her history, wanted to operate. The running thought was that it was possibly just left over from the endometriosis that had reformed. So on the day before Thanksgiving, her surgery day, the doctor told us that he wanted to get in and take a good look around to make sure there wasn't any other growths or irregularities. After a couple of hours, I was called to the consulting room and was told that the surgery was a success. At the time, the surgeon felt that it was just what we thought it was but was sending it out for a biopsy.
The next couple of weeks were tough for Denise. She had a major scar from the surgery that limited her movement, so we had to take things slow. We met with the surgeon for a follow up, but had no indication on any further updates on the biopsy. Denise called a couple of times, but was told they should have the results until her next appointment. So thinking that there wasn't anything to report, Denise took herself to her appointment and I stayed at work. I should have went. She was told the news. I can't imagine what it was like for her to hear the news by herself. She called me at work and I know how I took the news. Like my soul got kicked in the nuts. We both agreed we're not going to sit on this and start looking at what to do. The first thing was to tell our kids. They took it surprisingly well. But now, we had to get an appointment with a cancer doctor on what we were going to do next.
We live in a more rural part of Ohio, so treatment options are kind of limited to the local hospitals. That was our first stop. Denise was able to get an appointment, but it was for December 30th, two weeks after finding out. I didn't want to wait and asked her to please call the Cleveland Clinic. On Friday of that week, she did and we got an appointment the following Monday.
I'm so glad she made that call.
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