I only just realized I never said anything about the scan last week. It was completely eclipsed by the news that they thought I might have HNPCC, so it fell by the wayside.
My scan was not great, but not terrible. There was a shadow that may or may not be tumor; the scan didn't provide enough information to tell. It looked almost identical to my scan after chemo, which is not great, but not terrible.
My initial scan was very clear that I had a giant tumor. After chemo, the tumor had melted to the point where there was just this shadow, in the same place as my tumor was, but there's no way to tell if that shadow was tumor or inflammation or something else entirely. And it looked the same after radiation. So that means that the tumor did not grow like crazy during radiation, which is good. But it didn't completely eliminate the shadow of maybe-tumor, so that's less good. Basically, we got zero information from the scan. And it didn't really provide any more information about the odds that I'd need a colostomy either. So it was a lot of anxiety for no information (which was sort of what I wanted anyhow, no information).
We'll know a LOT more once we get the pathology back after surgery, which usually takes around two weeks. Apparently my surgeon doesn't bother to cut out individual lymph nodes in cases like mine, since odds are reasonable that many are infected; she just cuts out the whole chunk of tissue and sends it to the path lab and they sort through the tissue to find all the lymph nodes and test each of them for cancer. Obviously, the fewer that come back positive, the better my prognosis will be. The best case would be if they got in there and there was no more evidence of tumor and all the lymph nodes came back clean. Realistically, this is highly unlikely. But a small tumor and no lymph nodes would be great! So we'll just have to wait and see. At least by that point the scary awful unknown-ness will be over and I'll just have the awful known-ness of chemo left.
We did decide to go ahead and do the hysterectomy, which resulted in no shortage of tears. It's odd how much it pains me to think about it, even though I know it will have very little impact on my life, given that the odds I will ever get pregnant are essentially zero. But it's still hard, and continues to be hard. Until we manage to have kids via a surrogate or adoption, I'm not sure it will ever stop being hard. I've teared up at more than one diaper commercial this week, and find pictures of babies even more sad than usual. But I also think once it's done and out of my hands (I could still conceivably change my mind at this point) it will get easier. In many respects, losing complete control of my life has been one of the hardest parts of this, but in other respects not having any choice in the matter can be a relief.
If I honestly sit down and think about it, I am absolutely terrified of surgery. I've spent this week frantically working to make sure that things are in place at work for me to be out for a long time, which has left me with little time to think about it. But it is truly, honestly, terrifying. (sigh) Again, though, with the lack of choice being a relief, I know that if I don't do this I will die soon with probability 1 (and yes, I realize that we all will die with probability 1), so even if surgery carries a 2.5% chance of death, that's still 97.5% better odds than no surgery. It's not like I really have any choice.
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