I have had many people asking me what is going on with my health, so I thought I would blog the story. I have been wanting to get back to blogging, so this is a nice jump start :)
In August of 2007 I was admitted into the hospital for what they thought was appendicitis. While looking at a CT scan they happened to notice a “blip” on my pancreas. From there I was referred to Mayo Clinic to have an endoscopic ultrasound and biopsy of the mass. The biopsy was benign (Praise God!) and I was told that I would need surgery to have the tumor removed. Since I was getting married 1 month (to the day) from the biopsy they said I could wait until after the honeymoon to proceed with the surgery.
After the honeymoon they rescheduled me to meet with the surgeon in April 2008. The day before my appointment I found out I was pregnant! Obviously, this was a HUGE surprise. Since I was pregnant I couldn’t have surgery or even a CT scan to see how the tumor was doing.
On December 27, 2008 I gave birth to my beautiful little girl, Tatum Elizabeth. After I recovered I started the whole process again to get the tumor removed. In January 2009 I had another CT scan to determine if anything had changed. The tumor had grown a little and they also found another mass in my omentum. In February I had a bunch of tests / scans done to try to determine if the mass in my omentum was related to the tumor on my pancreas. Those tests came back negative, which was a good sign that the tumor on my pancreas wasn’t spreading.
They decided before I had the surgery to biopsy the mass in my omentum to determine what they were dealing with. I went in for the biopsy and they couldn’t find any tissue to biopsy! Thank you Jesus! When I spoke with my doctor today, she said that she thinks it could have been something related to my pregnancy or it could possibly be a ruptured ovary.
Bottom Line: I will be having surgery on March 26 to have 1/3 of my pancreas removed and possibly my spleen. They will also take some samples of my omentum to confirm that everything is OK there.
I want to say thank you for all the prayers and support. There have been times through this almost 2 year process that have been very unsettling and scary. I never thought in a million years at age 27 I would be dealing with tumors.
The silver lining in all of this is that I have learned the hard lesson of what it means to give yourself completely to God and trust Him with the things you cannot control. I hope this doesn’t come across as cheesy Christian talk because God has done something in me that has forever changed my faith and my life. My one prayer is that God is glorified in me no matter what the circumstances might be.
