Medical TMI: When it comes to our health, do we know too much? (an update on Sarah's Cancer scare)
Hey guys, The Women of the Year Awards was awesome. Really, one of the best events I've been to in years. For all the glorious details, head over to Storked! (Chrissy did a recap, with photos!). Here, we've got a much-anticipated update from Sarah on her major health scare. All I can say is, Phew!
Hi everyone! That's me in the photo in my messy kitchen (looking enormous, I know-eek-people ask me if I'm having twins every day) along with my son, Carson, and golden retriever, Paisley. A while ago I shared some pretty scary health news that I was facing with my pregnancy-an ovarian tumor/cyst that was growing at a scary rate. For the first time in my-cancer-free!-life words like "malignant" and "oncologist" and "surgery" were being thrown around. And as you can probably guess, I was an anxious mess. Not only did it throw me down that awful "what if" path, but I was worried for my unborn baby-surgery may have meant that he'd be born early and forced to spend his first few weeks in the NICU. Yeah, not exactly a mother's hope for her child.
Since so many of you were kind enough to send emails and comments wondering how things were going, I wanted to give you an update. And, I'm happy to report that it's a good-news update! As I sit here at my desk-I'm HUGE, you should see this belly-at 33 weeks into my pregnancy, I can safely say that I probably will be able to avoid surgery before my due date, and my prognosis looks great! As of my most recent ultrasound, the growth in my ovary finally stopped doubling in size, in fact, it shrunk a little. The thing is still huge-as in gargantuan!-but my doctor is confident that if a woman's body can handle twins, mine can handle a big ovarian cyst plus a lively baby boy. And, because I'm not having any pain (kind of rare) and because my baby is doing so great (he's already 6 pounds-at this rate, they're predicting a 9+ pounder, yikes!), I'm in the clear and likely won't have to deal with this thing surgically until after the baby comes. That boils down to huge relief, gratitude and absolute elation for me. Can you hear me letting out a big sigh of relief over here?!
And as I sit back and think about this health drama (oh and it was a drama-tell any pregnant woman that she has an ovarian tumor and that there's an outside chance it could be cancer and that she may need surgery ASAP, and you'll see what I mean!), I find myself wondering if we sometimes receive too much information in today's high-tech medical climate. Don't get me wrong, early detection of health issues like cancer and birth defects is so important. But when an ultrasound detects something that may just go away on its own in the course of time, I have to wonder if ignorance is bliss.
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I've known so many women who have been told frightening things about their health and the health of their babies thanks to something detected on an ultrasound, only to find out later that everything was just fine. Is all that knowledge doing us any good? I tend to be a tell-me-every-detail kind of person, so if something like this happened again, I'd probably want to know about it-even after all I've been through. But still, maybe I'd be better off in the dark? After all, this situation has really robbed a lot of the joy from my pregnancy.
What do you think? Are you a tell-me-every-little-detail-about-my-health kind of person, or would you rather not hear a word from your doc unless it was something super concrete?
Many thanks to you all for your support and encouragement. XO, Sarah (Come on over and visit me on Vitamin G!)
Related: Could that spot be cancer? Test yourself with our quiz.
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