You may have noticed it's been a while since my last post. You may even be wondering what's up? Here, in compact form, is an update on the last 3 weeks:
3 weeks ago, Hubby was out of town on business. I woke up, started my day like normal, and felt a shooting pain in my back. It started at my shoulder blade and went all the way down to my waist. In true form, I took 2 Motrin. The pain intensified and started moving around through my rib cage and up toward my heart. I went online and googled "heart attack symptoms." The pain got worse. I called Hubby in tears. He called a friend from church, who showed up at my house within 15 minutes, loaded me and the boys up, and drove us to the hospital.
Long story short, at the end of a 14-hour stay in the ER, the doctors couldn't say what had caused the excruciating pain. They DID say that the scans they had ordered had revealed a ping-pong ball size mass on my left ovary. They wrote a prescription for a painkiller and sent me home with instructions to call my ob-gyn.
The following week I saw my dr. She read over the report, looked at the pictures, and said, "Honey, that's no ping-pong ball. That's a peach." She ordered blood tests to check for "tumor markers" (a frightening term that indicates elevated levels of certain proteins where tumors may be present), and promised to call me with the results.
I waited four days. When she called, she reported that the test results were fairly normal. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she went on to say that she would be consulting with a gynecologist-oncologist to get his opinion on whether or not surgery would be necessary. She is familiar with me and the pace at which my life requires me to run, and agreed that if surgery could at all be avoided, we would not do it.
Less than 24 hours later, surgery was being scheduled. The oncologist apparently was of the opinion that something that has grown from nothing to peach-size in less than a year (since my last check-up) should be removed asap. He also advised against further testing or doing a biopsy pre-surgery, on the chance that a needle would puncture the growth and possibly leak cancer cells. Yup. Let's not go there.
That brings me to today. Surgery will be on August 7, and suddenly it seems like every detail of my life points to that date and the recommended six (!!!) weeks of recovery time that follows. Plans are being made for my mother to come and stay. I have had to call my boss and say I may not be there for the beginning of school. I am overwhelmed at the thought of all that needs to be done before then: school shopping, house cleaning, lots of meals in the freezer. I do not know what the future holds. I do not understand why God allows what He does. I do not have a real grasp on what this means for me or my family. Here's what I do know: I serve a God who loves me and is as unsurprised by this as I am taken aback. My God had each and every day of my life mapped out long before I was born. He knows the number of hairs on my head, each thought that I think, and He promises to be with me no matter what. He has a plan, a purpose, for what I am going through, and He only waits to see what I will do with my circumstances. Will I wonder and doubt and question His sovereignty, or will I trust His plan and rest in His arms?
"I will lift up my eyes to the hills--where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."
Psalm 121:1-2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtAjrNqEsoM
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