Pathology Results

I've been home for a few days. Healing is going good but "Bertha" is still in there causing all kinds of pressure and uncomfortibility. Each step of the way I keep thinking things just can't get any worse. It's already been two almost three months of pain and not sleeping normally. I miss sleeping in a bed. 

I have an appt to get my staples taken out tomorrow and my husband took the kids to stay with my mom for a bit. Within five minutes of them all leaving my phone rang. It was the hospital. It was the surgeon.

He asked if I had heard from Mayo yet. I said that I hadn't yet and asked if the results were finally in. Would I finally know what the hell this thing was? You bet I would. 

"Well, it’s a low-grade myxoid liposarcoma." I was silent for a minute, trying to process those words. Low grade didn't mean benign. I know he was still talking but he was drowned out by my own thoughts. "So, it is cancerous then?" I asked. He replied with an extended "yeahhh…." He then proceeded to tell me about how he would like me to continue care with Mayo in Rochester and not the specialist he had consulted with in St. Paul during my surgery. 

I hung up after getting the details and just broke down. I didn't expect to get that call. I didn't expect it to go from "it looks benign" to "it's cancerous." I was now questioning my own mortality. Would I be ok? Will I die? If I die, what will my children do? I need them just as much as they need me. Can I enter the afterlife without my children? Never seeing them again, hearing them say, "I love you." Frankly, the kids make it hardest to accept. I do not want to tell them their mother has cancer. I don't want their lives to change, for them to worry, for them to hurt. If it was just me then whatever it's scary but it would only affect me. 

I called my husband and said, "How long until you're home?" Through tears and sniffles, I tried to catch my breath enough to respond to his "why?"

This day has been hard. It's made me question everything. Life and death and the future of my kids. 

I don't want to research this to death. After all, there is literally nothing I can do about it. It's out of my hands. Instead, I just looked up what it was. Myxoid Liposarcoma of the retroperitoneal space. It's stupid rare and even more rare in that space. The strange thing to me was that not only is this rare to begin with but it's rare to have it at my age, in the location it's in. Everything about it just shouldn't be. So then, why is it?