The awful "C" word!

     One of my favorite words in the scriptures is "Remember". Spencer W. Kimball taught that remember may be the most important word in the dictionary "because all of us have made covenants, our greatest need is to remember."  It is funny how remember is my favorite word, yet often in my life, I forget who I am and Whose I am. I am a daughter of God sent to earth to follow him, get a body, learn from life's lessons and in the end try to become more like my Heavenly Father through life's experiences.

      I have been having many health problems for the past 5 months. It started when we were in Miami. I got up for the day, had a shower and was getting dressed when suddenly I was doubled over in pain. I was in agony for about 2 hours. I took medication and stayed in bed until late that afternoon. We were going to go to the Everglades that day so I needed to force myself up so we didn't miss it. The next day I was still in pain and we were running late for many of our flights, but I could not run through the airport because the pain was so bad.  I thought it must be a severe bladder infection gotten worse by swimming in the ocean so much.  I took some antibiotic I had been prescribed and by day 3 it was mostly gone so I forgot about it.

     A while later it happened again.  No signs of anything just sudden pain that made me unable to walk or do anything for a few hours.  I went in to the doctor and he felt my abdomen and it was a sharp pain on my right side so he rushed my blood work thinking it could be appendix.  It wasn't that and by the next day the pain had lessened so I just left it.  He prescribed some drugs that might help it so off I went.  Now I think we are to May. I was on my way to work; I was fine until I got to work, it started at the doorway of the school.  I could barely make it down to the classroom.  I went to the library to sit hoping it would pass so I could go to work.  By now I have had lots of time off for this unexplained sickness and you start feeling really bad for missing work so I hoped it would pass.  It didn't.  Luckily I have a daughter that drives and answers her cell phone ( in our family that doesn't often happen, the answering of the cell phone!)  She had to come and get me as there was no way I could drive.  I thought if I went in to the doctor during an attack he could figure it out.  So we called, showed up and made our way to the front of the line.  As I was writhing in pain in his office, he checked me out.  On previous visits when describing my pain we had thought bladder or maybe gall bladder attacks as they seemed random.  Pills had been prescribed with no success. The pain would come and go so suddenly.  So this time he determined it must be my bowel which I insisted was fine.  He gave me three prescriptions this time to try, saying, "I have no idea if these will work. Just try them. If they do , bravo!"  I went home discouraged, sure that there was something really wrong that he was missing, and frustrated because he just saw an over weight woman who was imagining things and over reacting.

* This is a picture of some of the medications prescribed in the last couple of months. Most were to try and figure out what was wrong! Doctors do love their pills!  

     When June came, it was nearing the last of school so it was busy; filled with fun activities.  I had a bladder surgery at the end of May I was hoping that would fix some of my problems.  Maybe it was just bladder spasms. It was my first day back at school after my surgery so I wasn't really strong yet but I was so excited to be back (June 17th).  It was in the evening and my kindergarten class was having their little graduation.  It was wonderful to be back.  Just before it was time to go on the stage to pass out awards I started to have pain.  I couldn't believe it.  I thought maybe it was the high heeled wedges I was daring enough to wear or just too much so soon after surgery.  My darling teacher and friend Sonia traded shoes with me and encouraged me to sit it out but I just didn't want to miss out so I went up on stage anyway.  The pain was so intense I didn't know how I was going to finish.  I was sweating and gritting my teeth but I finished.  I got onto a chair and my principal and friend David lent me a phone to call my husband.  The kids came to me for hugs and I waited for Sean and London to show up to drive me home.  They put me on an office chair and rolled me out to the car.  Thank goodness by then most people missed out on my roll of shame!  They got me in the car and took me home.  This time the pain was way worse than I have ever experienced.  I felt I was going to vomit, I kept blacking out and spontaneous tears ran out of my eyes.  I was in AGONY.  Sean and my dad gave me a blessing.  I immediately felt some relief.  I took some good drugs I was sent home with and still was in pain so we decided it was time for emergency.

     While laying in bed during my attack London remembered the date of my last attack and looking back I was able to figure out this was happening monthly. I figured it had to be my ovary so my first thought was that it was cancer!!  We went into the ER and they hooked me up to good drugs and an IV and ordered many tests, one of which was an ultrasound.  It was the middle of the night now so I was sent home at 4 in the morning and told to come back on Friday for an ultrasound. I missed another day of work and went and got an ultrasound which was so painful because I was still so tender in my abdomen. Now I just needed to go to my doctor to get the results.  I already had a feeling that my cancer was back.  I will leave off here and write the rest of the medical story tomorrow.