The beginning of my story...

The super short & condensed version of my current reality is that I have a mass – it has been classified as a cyst because that is the closest type of mass to the kind that I have. The kind that I have exactly is unknown. Unkown. What a seemingly simple and yet a complex word. I don’t think I’ve thought as much about individual words or phrases and the impact they have on how we view things, how we process things, and how we react to things in my entire life as I have in the last four months. So, here I am at 3:30am sitting at the computer in my parents’ basement typing away in the hopes that getting my thoughts of what in my mind at this moment is an overwhelming challenge down in words will help me be able to sleep even just for a couple of short hours before I need to start the day. In fact, I’ve decided I’m going to make this a blog for now at least as more and more people I didn’t even realize knew at least tidbits of what has been going on with me are reaching out. From now on other than to mostly immediate family and a few friends that will get texts first you can get updates here. I won’t promise I will post x-amount of times a week or even in a month beyond maybe this current week. More frequently at first for sure as I get us all on the same page and because I have always found peace and strength from words whether in reading, writing, or singing them but in the future we’ll see where this road takes me. Sorry for the lackluster appearance right now, deciding to do this was quite literally a split second decision so I'm getting things up and going before I chicken out. Not even my husband knows I'm doing this yet. Things on my page look better put together in the future but no promises there either.

After a few near sleepless nights I think feeling the need to get all of my thoughts down is exactly what I need right now. Here’s to hoping that what will likely come off as random rambling to some of us at times – myself included – might help even just one person. I’ve read many blog posts, articles, talks, and books that have done that for me in the past so hopefully that becomes the case for someone joining my blogging journey however short or long it may be. I have no clue how long it will last but as I mentioned before I feel that for me it is what is currently needed. After all, typing on a keyboard is definitely faster than writing with a pen on paper. Now back to the beginning of my present journey – Monday, December 12, 2022 around 6pm.

The setting was our home being the one I am blessed to share with my husband and son…it was a cold and dreary night...cue the sound of thunder and a flashing light…Just kidding, kind of anyways. It was an undoubtedly cold night being December in northern Utah but it was far from a dreary one. Consider that a very short sojourn into making this sound like the beginning of a book, play, or musical of which I have enjoyed many. I’m far from being the funniest person in the world but I like to think I have a decent sense of humor at least some of the time. I had been enjoying watching a Christmas movie with my husband and son – Arthur Christmas if I recall - sitting in our very decked out for the holidays living room when we paused the movie as the oven beeped signaling that it was warm and ready to cook our dinner. So far, that Monday had been an unimaginably normal one. I got up from the couch feeling perfectly fine, walked to the kitchen, put dinner in the oven, and in the seconds it took to walk back to the family room I went from feeling perfectly fine to feeling very perfectly not fine. I remember stopping mid-step and instantly grabbing my lower right abdomen where there was this sudden, sharp, unbearable pain. I also remember taking a slow deep breath before looking at my husband and as soon as he made eye contact he stood up and came over to me asking if I was okay. The answer I gave was, “I’m not sure”. Then not even a minute later after feeling an even sharper stab-like pain my answer quickly changed to no. My husband being the wonderful man that he is helped me sit back down on the couch and we sat there for a few minutes in relative silence.

I’m sure seeing my face he could tell every time the stabbing pain happened instantly which in itself is pretty unusual, at least for me when it comes to feelings of discomfort and pain. I’ve been told multiple times by doctors and nurses alike that I must have a fairly high pain tolerance but in those few minutes, as in many minutes and hours to follow, it certainly didn’t feel like that was the case anymore. Quick side note – my son is now 20 months old and I chose to have an epidural when giving birth to him. My epidural very suddenly and quickly stopped working, not just had worn off a small amount or whatever, literally stopped working in a matter of minutes and at the time that next hour until the anesthesiologist got back to me was the worst pain I had felt yet. While the epidural was working the only time I had any clue I was having a contraction was in watching one of the many machines you are hooked up to. I was told by every nurse who came in that that was fairly unusual and many of them would make a comment along the lines of saying that I must have a pretty good pain tolerance. That’s just for a reference point when I say that the pains I was feeling on the December evening and beyond that were worse than the pains I felt in that hour or so between my epidural completely failing and other issues occurring that ended up with me having an emergency C-section. For all you woman who have given birth without an epidural at all I have major respect for you because I don’t know that I could do it.

Now back to the current point of that side note – the pains I felt that even were so unexpectedly strong and random that at that time I would have rather gone back to my epidural failing. Every single pain I have felt in regards to my health issue since then haven’t been that bad but there have been multiple instances where that has been my reality. I think the hardest part in regards to the pain is that though parts of it were very constant other parts of it were so sporadic and intense that I got to the point where the slightest of movements made me want to cry sometimes whether shifting the tiniest bit while sitting or standing up as slowly as possible just hoping that another jab of pain wouldn’t happen. Needless to say, when it took everything I had to get out of bed the next morning I called to get a doctors appointment scheduled. As soon as I described where I was feeling the pain the receptionist immediately gave me a time to come in later that afternoon and said to show up earlier or to go to the ER if the pain got much worse in those few hours.

My husband came home from work and we very shortly were out the door to go see my doctor – for those of you who live in Utah valley somewhere if any of you are in need of a new general doctor I’m happy to share the name of mine because him and his staff were beyond amazing to work with and were the first bright spot of what quickly became the hardest challenge I have yet faced. They got me in to see my doctor within about 10 minutes of us arriving at the office and after asking just a few simple questions he said he was going to get an order in to the hospital for me to get a CAT scan done saying that he wouldn’t be surprised at all it I wasn’t suffering from appendicitis and would need to get my appendix removed right away. Obviously that wasn’t a guarantee but it was definitely what I was hoping for because in his words and with what little I had read online for things it could be with where my pain was appendicitis was the best case scenario. We waited for around 20 minutes while his office staff got that ball rolling and in that time he decided to change his request so my CAT would be one done with contrast so they had a better quality scan to look at on the chance it wasn’t my appendix. I have no doubt that him having that thought was inspired because it turned out to be a very needed thing.

On our way back home we stopped at the hospital imaging lab to pick up the oral contrast and then we made phone calls to each of our parents to let them know what was going on. The next day I went back to the hospital for my CAT scan and was told to expect a phone call from my doctor much later that day or even the next day simply depending on how long it took to get the scans assessed and back to him. The wait ended up being much shorter for a not very pleasant outcome. We had maybe been home from the hospital an hour when my doctor called. He cut right to the chase saying, “Well, Shantay, I wish it was but it isn’t appendicitis. You have a mass and it’s rather large, approximately the size of a small cantaloupe as far as we can tell so, we are already making some phone calls and finding out which surgeons are covered by your insurance because with the size of it I’m sure it is something that will need to be removed very soon.”. I’m sure in seeing the word “mass” most of your minds went right where mine went immediately – cancer. Thankfully my mass isn’t even classified as being precancerous as of now though there are some precancerous cells present in it but over the course of those next few weeks my mind dwelled on that dreaded word that no one ever wants to hear – cancer - many times and my heart goes out to any of you who have previously or currently dealt with cancer yourself or have watched a loved one go through it. My mind still dwells on the possibility of cancer knowing that at some point my mass could be cancerous – one of many reasons I felt the need to get things out of my own mind because I don’t know that I can handle too many more sleepless nights.

I’ll end this blog post here. For now, I hope that all of you regardless of what difficult circumstance you currently find yourself in or may find yourself in moving forward are able to find even the briefest moments of peace and comfort to help you continue on your journey. I have had many of those moments myself and in the moments where I’m not feeling peaceful at all I cling to them with all of the hope and faith I possess until I find my next moments of peace. Peace and comfort have become some of my favorite words to dwell on lately and I’m sure they will stay that way for a good, long while. Until next time, I sincerely wish that all of you -even if you don’t necessarily think you are needing peace and comfort right now -will be able to find it as quickly as possible when you do need it even if it may last for far briefer moments than we often hope for. We all need something to hold on to at times even to get us through the next minute or to the next hour or to the next day and those two words and all that they encompass are a couple of many life savers for me right now. In my next post I’ll explain why I chose to call my blog The Rambling Anomaly, share my thoughts on a few very specific words and what they have come to mean to me, and also continue sharing my story which, I’m sure, is probably obvious.