Newly diagnosed, questions, concerns

June 1, 2004

Hi all,

This is my first post to this group, so please forgive me if I

ramble. I found out about my fibroid two weeks ago when I had

laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. Imagine my surpise when one of

the first things I heard in the recovery room was " we found

something else.... "

1. Apparently I have one fairly huge fibroid (22cm). Can somebody

please tell me what that works out to in the if-it-were-a-baby-it-

would-be-X-months-old scheme of things?

2. I had a gyn appointment today to discuss options (and a second

opinion appt for later this week). My gyn recommends a hysterectomy

(of course), but leave the ovaries and the cervix. I'm 39 with no

kids and no plans for them either, so I think I'm fairly comfortable

with that as a recommendation. Does anybody have any suggestions

for communicating with friends and family what decisions you've

made? Since I found out about my fibroid, I've so many people give

me their opinion about what I should do that I'd like to scream.

3. Did anybody else out there name their fibroid(s), or am I just a

little nuts by all this? I decided to call mine Marvin (for Marvin

the Martian from Looney Tunes fame), because I feel like they told

me I'm harboring a little alien person (ok, there was one REALLY

strange dream on the painkillers from the gallbladder surgery -- did

anybody see Alien where the creature bursts out of the guy's

chest???)

I think my major problem, concern, question, whatever, is that I

don't know how I FEEL about all of this mess. The doctor says " no

biggie, just some more surgery and it'll be all better " . Because of

the size of the darn thing they can't see one of the ovaries, so

there's a slight possibility it could be an ovarian mass and

therefore cancerous, so there's that tossed into the mix. I had

thought that talking myself into being calm enough to get through

the whole gallbladder surgery was a great success on my part, now

I've got this to take care of too. Ok, so anyway, I feel like I'm

all over the map emotionally -- everything from " yank the sucker

out " to " oh my god, what if it's CANCER? " to " blah, blah, blah, just

another day in paradise. " So anyway, now that I've bored you all to

death, does anybody out there have any strategies for coping with

the emotions and stress of all the decisions that have to be made?

Thanks for listening,

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