my dear friend is in the hospital right now in New York and I am trying to get organized so I can go visit her tonight. It's a two hour train ride, not so bad... but it just seems so far away.
She was married on a gorgeous day in June of last year. She married her high school sweetheart, after they had been reunited following a six year split. Theirs is truly a blessed relationship, and they match perfectly. It's wonderful to be with her and to be with him, and to be with them together.
I met her during the first week of orientation when I came to nursing school. We were standing in line next to each other for some reason and struck up a conversation. One thing led to another and we were friends. I've always felt very lucky that she picked me as a friend. But we're the good sort of friends- honest, forgiving, and sometimes pretty snarky with each other.
After the wedding she and her husband knew they wanted children soon, so she stopped taking birth control pills. She told her husband: "I'm not going to take any more pills, so if you don't want a kid you better do something about it." we laughed about that. So she stopped with the pills, yet she just didn't get her period. Ever. She waited nine months before she had her appointment with a fertility specialist. I don't mean to tell scary stories, but this going to be one. If you don't need to hear scary stories then this would be the time to go to another diary.
The fertility specialist had an ultrasound done of her abdomen. His hunch was correct- there was a seven centimeter mass on her ovary. That same day, that same appointment he had my dear friend change into her street clothes and then he walked her down the hall to meet his friend the oncologist. Now, less than two weeks later she is at the hospital with one less ovary and one less fallopian tube and is waiting for the staging results that will tell her just how bad her cancer is.
This is terrible news. This is made worse because I know about cancer. I know the odds. For the next six days I will be holding my breath, waiting to hear the verdict. Now, if one HAD to have ovarian cancer, hers is the kind of tumor they'd want. 90-95% survival rate if caught at an early stage, which is great for ovarian cancer. But still, that means my friend has a 5-10% chance of dying from this bum ovary. Chemotherapy isn't a great option, there just isn't a cure for invasive ovarian cancer.
We spoke on the phone last night- her voice raspy from the intubation tube they'd used during surgery. She was in pain, she was tired, and she was scared. I was so far away. I am scared. She is worried that she will never be able to have children... I am worried that she won't live another year. There are the unmentionables with cancer, and early death is one we don't care to think of. So we'll talk about all the great fertility treatments that exist, and we'll talk about how soon after recovery she will be able to start fertility drugs to get that ball rolling. We won't talk about what we will do if the pathology report is bad. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.