Here be dragons

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm not quite sure I'm ready to write about this yet, but I know there are people out there wondering what the outcome was, and since I've been writing it in email, I might as well write it out here, too, although perhaps not going into great detail, and flesh it out later.

I had my second appointment with my doctor (or, more accurately, "nurse-midwife") yesterday, my birthday. It was one of those "good news/bad news" things. The good news was that I don't have cancer. The bad news is that I'm going to have to have a hysterectomy anyway. The ultrasound showed the presence of a multitude of fishes--no, wait--fibroid tumors. Which, despite the name, are apparently always benign, so there's no fear that they are cancerous, and if I chose to leave them, I could.

But they are causing some not-so-pleasant symptoms, which may or may not get worse, but which are undoubtedly not going to get better. I will do my research and make a (hopefully) informed choice, but it's fairly certain that choice is going to be for surgery.

I had pretty well convinced myself that it was going to be nothing, that I was going to get a clean bill of health and be told that it was just one of those things, that the new medication would smooth things out, go on about your business, nothing to look at here . . .

So it hit me completely out of the blue, a total shock. I watched the screen on the ultrasound machine while the tech was doing it, and she kept measuring and marking things, and I kind of wondered what it was she was marking, but not knowing anything at all about the process, didn't really worry. Even after she left the room so I could get dressed and meet with the doctor, I looked at the screen on the machine and wrote down the measurements of my uterus and ovaries just because I thought it was interesting, not because I thought there was anything odd about them in the slightest.

But apparently my uterus is enlarged--I think she said to the 12-14 week stage (that's apparently referring to the size of a baby at that age)--and there's a cyst on one of my ovaries that she wants to keep an eye on, so to speak.

It's just so weird to me. I've never been sick, I hardly ever even get a cold. The only time I've ever had surgery was when I had my tubes tied when I was 30, and that was just the so-called "belly button" surgery, a tiny incision. The worst part of it was the anesthesia, and man, I'm not looking forward to that in the slightest.

Anyway, I know I'll get through it. The title is a reference to the old notations on maps when you reached the edge of the known world. "Here be dragons." Life is a journey, and it's not always along the path that you expect. There are lots of twists and turns, and nothing ever seems to move in a straight line. I'm hoping to find a way to make this into a positive experience, and to learn something from it, if nothing else. I'm kind of stepping off the edge of my comfort zone, stepping into the unknown. "Here be dragons."

I'm glad that I made the decision to talk about the fact that I just turned 50, to face the demon of middle-age, or old age, or whatever it is, because if I hadn't done that, this would certainly have affected me a lot more than it has already. And I have to assume that the fact that I'm in better shape physically will help me get through surgery, and losing weight should help there, as well. So we'll just go on moving forward, into the dragons.