I spent my morning at Barnes — the hospital where I’m having my surgery next week. I had to have pre-op testing and go over all the info.  Both of the nurses I spoke with today were visibly surprised when they saw the procedures I’m having. Ugh…that just drives home how fucking unfair this all is.

I’ve been having doubts recently. Not about the hysterectomy. That makes sense under the circumstances. The doubts have been creeping in regarding the necessity of the oophorectomy. Will it really increase my odds of survival? Will the side effects outweigh the benefits? Stuff like that.

So I did what anybody would do…I took it to the internet. I started googling all sorts of stuff:

life after menopause
life after oophorectomy
tamoxifen vs ovary removal
oophorectomy after breast cancer

You get the idea.

The last search led me to a 2015 article written by a lady who was experiencing a breast cancer recurrence. Her breast cancer was ER+, just like mine. She was about my age, too. Maybe slightly older. The article discussed why having her ovaries removed would be beneficial for her estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, especially considering she was now Stage 4, the other meds weren’t really working anymore, and removal of the ovaries was the only way to truly cut out the estrogen that was feeding her cancer.

The article had a link to her WordPress blog. I clicked the link, anxious to learn more about her journey and her experiences post-oophorectomy. It became clear to me rather quickly that she had died. The blog hasn’t been updated since 2016. In one of her last posts, she wrote about how sick she had become, and remarked that she wished she had removed her ovaries sooner.

I cried.

Having the oophorectomy is the right decision. It’s difficult, but it is the right thing to do.

That said, I’m going to cry about it. I’m going to be down about it for a while. That’s just the way it goes. But I’ll come out the other side stronger for it, like I always do.