Denial and the Enormous Ovarian Mass; A Story of Surviving Ovarian Cancer

By Larry Puls @Larrypulsauthor

Ovarian Cancer Surgery

Midday, Friday afternoon, a long week. There’s a call on the line. A referral. One that my memory will not let go of—even after two decades. Transport will have her here in two hours.

I walk into her room—now five o’clock. A glance defines a thousand words. Her shoulders yield information—skin over bone, a starving patient? I look back at the chart. She is over three hundred pounds. Really? I turn again to this woman. Those shoulders, those emaciated shoulders, say malnourished. My eyes move lower. There under the covers is something that I cannot adequately describe. A mass. A growth. Big, beyond comprehension. My eyes rudely continue their stare. Shock and awe. The power of denial lived out in front of me. How long has that been there? I can only imagine.

She slips her legs off the side of the bed, onto the floor. Her arms reach down to grab, then lift, something residing inside her, the likes of which I have never witnessed. And never since—twenty-two years and counting. The mass equaled quintuplets, gestating for some four years. Shouldn’t that have been delivered some time ago? She smiles her smile, but only four teeth remain. Somehow, my heart immediately bonds to this soul. There must be a story in there. Maybe sad. Maybe forgotten. I don’t know. But I want to understand this puzzling person. I need to know the rest of the story. I must figure out how this happened, how she got here, right now, in this unfortunate state.

I find the courage to ask, “How long has it been there?” She responds sheepishly, vaguely, almost inaudibly, “maybe two years”. My mind translates on that hesitation—probably something around five years. Who knows? My inquiries move on, “Why now?” Something must have forced her to come in now, right? She pauses. A simple answer is spoken.

“I couldn’t pick my vegetables and I couldn’t tie my shoes.”  

I guess I would go to the doctor at that point too. And I understood why she couldn't physically do the things she wanted. Still, my mind’s eyes roll in my head. How did you function so long like this?

A day later, in the operating room, playing out my engineering chess game. Anesthesia sleeps her. A thirty-six-inch incision (A three-foot cut in a five-foot woman). Blood vessels feeding the growth—the size of a tree trunk—only softer. The volume of red liquid flowing through those vessels—certifiably scary. Don’t lose control of those puppies, I say to myself. Perspiration is wiped from my forehead. We coddle it up onto her pelvic bone, wrap it in a sterile sheet, hours of calculated moves. Dissection, retraction, and more dissection. Wipe my forehead again. The parasite gives up. It is successfully separated from this now thin woman—intact. One hundred and thirty pounds of ovary. A sigh of relief.

Half of someone’s weight, gone in one sitting! How does the human body react to such an event? I didn’t know—never been there before. Was there a class on this in medical school I missed? Did I fall asleep during the lecture titled, “Taking out half a person’s weight and how they will react to it”? Perhaps. I want to know who has experience with something like this. Likely no one. Until I know her body’s reaction, I opt to ship her off to the ICU. Her body will logically try to sort this out. I will Google that question--except Google hadn't been invented then. In the end, she breezed through the next twenty-four hours. And before she left for home three days later, she lost yet another thirty pounds of edema.

At her follow up, a flat belly. Yes, she loved that. Pathology revealed a slow growing form of cancer and surgery should render a cure. That elicited her warm smile again. Half her weight, gone in one week—amazing—the stuff dreams are made of—if you’re over three hundred pounds.

A year later, her tummy remained flat. Her four teeth, replaced with dentures. And yes, she could tie her shoes. Those veggies in her garden, they found their way out of the soil and into her home. And even now, her memory will never leave me.

Have you ever known you had something wrong and ignored it until it was almost too late? I have seen so much of that now that I totally believe in the power of denial. Tell us a story about yourself on denial if you dare, so we can all learn from it, myself included. And maybe your words will make us want to go see our physician. Prevention is the best cure.