Heredity
posted in General |So today I’m taking a break, a quiet time away from my kids, my wife, my work connections. I’m checking email, sipping coffee, enjoying the lap of luxury in the lobby of Providence Hospital.I’m on their ‘guest’ wireless network, which is insecure and only allows web-page browsing. I’ve been given a pager by the information desk.
Why am I here? Ms B has been out of work for almost two weeks, she’s been having a lot of abdominal pain. Three doctor visits, an ultrasound, and finally a consultation, and we’re fairly sure that yes, she has a cyst on one ovary, but also “something else” on the other. The doctors have narrowed it down to four possibilities, and they need more information. So they’re doing laproscopic surgery — in through her navel — to investigate, and remove the second ‘mass.’ Some scary words have been tossed around, but actually sitting here while she’s having the procedure is kind of relaxing. It’s one of those things that’s so totally out of my hands that I needn’t worry about it. She’ll either be out of the hospital in a few hours and then home, or she’ll be here for a while (if the surgery shows some of the more drastic results.)
Ms B’s sister had ovarian cysts from when she was about 15 to about 27, when she finally had a hysterectomy. Ms B’s mother was adopted, so we don’t know how far back these problems go, but we will have to keep our daughters informed of “ovary problems.”
We’re just glad we already have daughters; that’s one less stress about all of this.
update…
Ms B didn’t have any sorts of cancer. She did have, as the doctor described it, “a bag full of blood clots” that was twisted in on itself about five times. The pictures were pretty nasty. The pathologist will be preparing a full report on it, but that was the basic description. Ms B’s surgeon was impressed with her pain threshold, and can’t believe that she has been living with this mass for at least three weeks.
