Erik, on Wednesday: “You’re not going to put this all over the internet, are you?”
Me: “Not EVERY detail.”
It started last Friday at work. Just sitting at my desk, moving through my projects when BAM! A sharp and sudden popped up in my front left side, just a couple of inches left of my belly button. Since I get random pains all the time, I did not think much of it until a couple of bathroom visits and deep breathing exercises had not even made a dent. My co-workers and boss told me I looked weak and pale, and a little internal voice was telling me SOMETHING IS WRONG. Not the voice that tells me I look good in dark lipstick even though I don’t, but the voice that comes from my gut.
The urgent care doctor said he was worried about a couple of possibilities, so he sent me to a radiologist for an ultrasound and a CT scan. Both showed… nothing. But I’m still in pain. I was sent home with a prescription for a painkiller and antibiotic, and instructions to get plenty of rest. The voice said SOMETHING IS STILL WRONG.
Over the weekend, the pain turned from sharp to a dull, general ache in my side. I had a slightly elevated temperature all weekend (never going above 100) and was a bit dizzy and lightheaded. But for some reason, I began to argue with the voice. “Stop being a hypochondriac. You probably just pulled a muscle and have a bit of a non-specific bug.” When my regular doctor called on Monday to check in after receiving the report from urgent care, she asked me to come in the next day just to be safe and get checked out.
Luckily, my doctor believes in listening to those voices. And because she is excellent at reading people, she knew there was something more to it when I was describing my symptoms and trying to act like they were no big deal.
Me: “Yeah, I’ve had a slight temperature since Friday. And I’ve been kind of light-headed. And the pain is still there. But it’s no big deal, right?”
Doctor: “I have a feeling you’re saying that it’s no big deal, but your body is telling you that it’s more. Let’s do some tests.”
MY DOCTOR IS A MIND READER. She is also a tri-athlete and a single mom and the best doctor ever.
My white blood cell count was higher than it was on Friday, and there was blood in my urine. The last test on Tuesday showed something that never even entered my mind as a possibility. “There’s something wrong with your left ovary. It’s swollen and it looks like there’s a mass in it.” My voice was SCREAMING. My doctor put me on another strong antibiotic in the event that it was an infected cyst, and told me to see her first thing on Wednesday morning for another blood test.
Wednesday morning, I actually did feel a little better. I figured that I’d drop in to my doctor, get a blood test that told me the antibiotics were working, and go to work. But I was still in pain. Because of that, my doctor referred me to a gynocologist who happened to be working at the ER that day. And she wanted me to see him IMMEDIATELY. “Just go to the ER and have him paged, and he’ll do another test. If he finds something wrong, he’ll be able to order any other tests there or even get you into the OR right away.”
The voice that tells me I look good in dark lipstick is telling me, “he’s not going to find anything wrong, and then you’re going to go to work and MAN will you be busy for the rest of the day trying to catch up. You should just go ahead and plan on working late tonight.” The other voice said, “Drive faster.”
I was put into a room in the ER pretty quickly, and the doctor comes in. He makes the decision pretty quickly that he’d rather just do a diagnostic laproscopic procedure instead of doing another test – and he wants to do it NOW. There’s obviously something bad going on in there, he said, and I don’t want to waste time on another test. And before I can even finish calling my husband to let him know, there are 5 or 6 people in the room prepping me for surgery. Two are taking my clothes off and telling me I need to take off any jewelry or contacts RIGHT NOW, and another is asking about insurance, and another is asking me when I last had anything to eat or drink, and one is asking me about my medical history, and everyone is talking at once, including my mom who is telling me to tell the nurse about that one time in 1993 that I had THAT illness, and then I look at her but HELLO someone is putting an IV in my arm but they seemed to have slipped because THERE’S A RIVER OF BLOOD RUNNING DOWN MY ARM AND WHY ARE THE SHEETS RED AND WET, OH THAT’S JUST MY BLOOD EVERYWHERE, and the nurse is asking me again when I last ate, and another nurse is making sure that I called my husband because the doctor said I need to be operated on as soon as an OR becomes available and I’ll want to see him before I go, and another nurse is taking my blood pressure and remarking that it’s a bit high, are you stressed right now? Because you need to calm down before we can operate on you. And that was all before 11 am.
The good news is, I did calm down. Erik did get in, and I was operated on 3 hours later. The doctor removed a cyst from my ovary that was twisting, one which he said was starting to affect the blood flow to my ovary so it’s very good it was removed right away, and PS it was benign so no cancer. And the voice is just saying, “you should listen to me more often. I would never tell you to wear dark lipstick.”