My Answer to the Question: "How Did Your D&C Go?"

It went very smoothly and I was pleasantly surprised by how un-traumatic it was. The pre-op stuff I had to do, combined with my own anxiety, was more stressful than the actual surgery.

Despite my general wariness of and aversion to hospitals and many of the "mainstream" docs I encountered in the last four years, I must say that I was treated beautifully at CPMC, by every single person I had any contact with at the hospital, which was quite a few. I even had a lovely and interesting conversation with the anesthesiologist about his view of the term "twilight sedation."

The D&C itself went without a hitch. I woke up feeling absolutely fine - no pain, no discomfort of any kind. I took it easy when I got home, took no painkillers at all, and today feel perfectly normal, though I have been instructed to do no heavy exercising for a week (oh NO, whatever will I do?!).

My surgeon (the one person I have the least rapport with, of course) stopped by my recovery bed for about 30 seconds when I was barely awake and said blithely that "everything went fine," and that I should make a post-op. appt. for a couple of weeks from now (which is way too long to make me wait, as I have been told  that those results are usually back within four or five days). Then she disappeared before I had the presence of mind to ask for more specifics, ie. "What did you see in there? How did my uterine lining LOOK? Were there any cancerous lesions detected? Anything unusual that you could actually see during the procedure? Anything that wasn't picked up by the ultrasounds?"

The only other thing I found out was what she said to Jack in the waiting room, something like: "We got a whole lot of stuff out, including several small polyps." This was surprising, given that only one tiny polyp was detected in the ultrasounds. It seems to me that this is good news, because maybe all those small polyps WERE the main cause of the bleeding (as opposed to cancer-- which, btw, according to Dr. Cowan, was an unlikely cause because — and I'm paraphrasing here — "bleeding from cancer is usually more of an ooozing, not as profuse as yours."

The result of the pathology report, of course, is the bigger issue. However, I am less afraid of that now than I was in the beginning. This is because of the books I've been reading in the last two weeks ("Knockout," by Suzanne Somers, and "Peace, Love and Healing," by Bernie Siegel), and ALSO because of the "extra" information I've gathered (about pathology reports that show the possibility of cancer) from:

1) Dr. Mark Renneker, the wonderful man who consulted with and helped to guide me through the scary decision-making process after I was diagnosed with bc, and who is NOT your typical mainstream doc,
2) Dr. Thomas Cowan, who is also not a mainstream doc

Instead of giving me the standard, patronizing "Cliff notes" answer that I got from the surgeon (who did the endometriall biopsy), they both took the time to go into more depth, explaining stuff about how path reports are interpreted, how "suspicions" of cancer are routinely dealt with by mainstream docs, and why my surgeon MAY have purposefully scared me more than she should have. Why would she have done that? you may ask. Well, Renneker noted that it is not uncommon for conventional docs to take an "attitude" with any patient who reveals that they are interested in alternative medicine . . . or who asks too many pesky questions . . . or who, as I did, asserts herself by saying something unacceptable such as, "I seriously doubt I'd allow my ovaries to be taken, and there's no way I'll let any lymph nodes go. There's no survival advantage to that."

In other words, if they think you aren't going to be a "good little" patient who obediently accepts everything they recommend, without question, they may be inclined to try and scare you into submission by overemphasizing the worst possible case scenarios. They see you as a New Agey, ditzy, flakey type who needs to be rudely "woken up" to the hard cold "facts" of what you might be facing.

In addition, I had a couple of other helpful, supportive conversations with:

1) Efrem Korngold, my beloved acupuncturies/Chinese herbalist,
2) Lynne Farrow, the owner of the website "breastcancerchoices.com" and also the moderator of the Yahoo "Breast Cancer Think Tank" discussion list, and
3) David Zava, the head of Zava Labs (which does hormone testing); he's an expert re: bioidentical hormone balancing

None of this is to say that an aggressive cancer isn't still a possibility. But at least I now see more options for dealing with it if I get a "positive" result back from the report. I no longer think that such a result would mean that my one and only option would be to leap, in a rush of panic, to find myself an oncological gynecologist and then schedule a hysterectomy, oophorectomy, and/or removal of lymph glands, possibly followed by chemo or radiation. (And if it DOES turn out that these are my best/only options, at least I now feel better equipped, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally, to face such a scenario... because I have more support in those areas, something I was not getting...or ever going to get... from the surgeon.)

Wow, what I thought was going to be a "tiny" update turned HUGE, but I guess that's because it has to do with much more, on many different levels, than the answer to the question "how did your D&C go?"

Comments

[harlan lewps]

Hi PJ -- Karen and Barb and I sat around yesterday in downtown New York City talking about you. Glad to hear things went well for you. We're having a great time here.

[Lynne]

We celebrate your grace and persistence, dear Jane, thru what would have daunted a lesser soul. The power of your storytelling invests us all with, "I can handle this."

Thank you for sharing so much of yourself.

Lynne

[mary ann stein]

This sounds positive, Dear Jane. I was hoping you'd write lots about the whole experience. Thanks.

[Jill]

So glad things went better than anticipated. Thanks for letting me know how it went and look forward to hearing updates. I just have a good feeling about this.......partly due to your positive attitude, which can play such a big role!
I am so happy that you have such a great group of support to go to! I am sending positive vibes your way, too! Love you, Jill