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Writer's pictureJeannie Collins Beaudin

A nail-biter week…




It was a long week, waiting for my appointment day to arrive, but my hubby was coaching me to not get overly anxious about what my biopsy results might be. Why get upset over a potential bad result that might not happen? Just keep busy with other things… Good advice.


I also thought about wise counsel from another relative who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Scream, cry and get angry for a week or so, then get busy working to defeat the disease. Ten years or so post-diagnosis, this strategy has worked well for her. She has a zest for life that anyone would envy.


It’s all about keeping your quality of life, I think. It’s easy to let yourself drown in a bad diagnosis, even before you receive it, as you worry about worst-case scenarios. A good life strategy for any of us is to look for what you can do to make whatever time you have the best it can be, regardless of good or bad diagnoses. Take the bull by the horns, my hubby likes to say… live life to the fullest, do all those things you’ve always wanted to do, focus on happy thoughts.


But part of me wanted to prepare myself, just in case… sort of like before childbirth: if you know what’s coming and prepare for it as objectively as possible, it’s not as bad. It can be easier to handle news and stay in control when you’re prepared for anything.


But it was good news!

The first thing the doctor said, is that it’s not bad news. I imagine she’s had to deliver her fair share of devastating diagnoses over the years. So, no cancer, thank goodness! But my heart goes out to others in that situation that didn’t get the results they were hoping for. This week has made me more understanding of what it would be like to learn that you or someone you love has cancer.


My doctor talked about my problem likely being a polyp—a growth of some sort inside the uterus—and described the pain as being due to the uterus’s attempt to push out what shouldn’t be there.


But what’s the cause?

I wanted to discuss potential causes of an overgrowth of hormone-sensitive tissue. I guess I’ve always been a person who wants to understand why things happen. Everything has a cause and, if we learn what drives a disease, we can change our behaviour to lower the risk of it returning or worsening in the future. And maybe we can help to protect our kids from developing the same problems.


But she didn’t have any thoughts on what could be promoting growth of hormone-dependent tissue in a post-menopausal woman currently producing only low amounts of hormones. I briefly explained my previous unintended chemical misadventures and my understanding of the environmental connections I’d learned about—the topic of last week’s blog —but it didn’t appear to be something she’d heard or read about before. I guess doctors have their hands full just trying to cure us all, leaving little time for reading about theories that are not easy to prove.


Still, I can’t help thinking they might not be as busy, nor waiting times as long, if we could make a few behaviour changes that would lower our disease risk. I’ll keep looking for the cause and encouraging research, so we can avoid needing so much treatment!


And the next queue…

So now I’m on another wait list—the one for the OR. Yes, at least the next “surgery” will be done with a general anesthetic in an operating room. It will just be a day surgery, so relatively minor, but apparently some women experience more pain than others when being poked, prodded, and trimmed on the inside. I’m one of the sensitive ones, I guess! So, yes, general anesthetic please!!


The downside is that it could again be a wait—perhaps months, the receptionist says. OR times are assigned at the beginning of each month at our hospital, so no way of knowing very far in advance. Hard to say whether we will get to Spain this winter (booked to leave Jan 18th!) but with COVID the trip is a bit up in the air anyway… They are saying we should expect a mild, wet winter in Canada this year. I wonder how they can make these predictions so far in advance???


So, all is good or, at least, as good as it can be. But it was a nail-biter week… literally. No fingernails left! I’m feeling better, mentally and somewhat physically, but still counting out my Tylenol for the day to make sure I don’t take too much (8 tablets of 500mg is the maximum safe dose!).


I’ve had more good days than bad lately, fortunately. I think I might investigate biofeedback (controlling a body function with your mind) now that I know the mechanism of my pain (spasms in the uterus). I’ve read that people can be trained to lower their blood pressure or increase blood circulation to part of the body by focusing their mind. I wonder whether biofeedback could be similar to the placebo response I’ve written about previously … your subconscious triggering your immune system to do what you want. Stay tuned!


Thanks for all your messages over the past few weeks—I so appreciate the support! Hope I can pay it forward to a couple of dear friends who were not as fortunate as I was when they received their news…



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