Lisa
It has been said that our world is shaped by the stories we tell; and likewise, we as individuals are sculpted by the stories we hear. —Christopher Coppernoll, Secrets of a Faith Well Lived Lisa was the model of good health. She took care of herself through a disciplined life of exercise and good eating. A neonatal nurse, she also loved to be on top of her work game. But when her life of order came crashing down with her diagnosis of ovarian cancer, she was forced to re-evaluate what was left. Knowing that knowledge is power, she decided she would talk to her teenage daughter about it all as openly as possible, and spare her the type of pain that Lisa herself felt as a girl when her own mother had the fatal sickness. I HAVE ONE DAUGHTER, AND I would like her to know later on down the line when she picks up this book that it was me in this discussion. I am 45 and I will be 46 in September. I was diagnosed when I had just turned 40. So it’s been a little over five years. I had been feeling unwell for about three to six months, just general tiredness. I weighed about 103 pounds. I was a runner and I used to eat phenomenal meals and still stayed that weight. I was extremely active— I did kayaking and running—and I had an eight-year-old daughter and a full-time job. In the last 20 years of work, I think that I might have called in sick maybe twice. And at that time, I had called in sick three times in as many months, and actually my husband brought that to my attention. He said, “Are you sure that you are all right? Maybe you should go and see a doctor.” 17 Lisa I said, “No, no, it’s really nothing.” This was because the symptoms that I was having were just so general that I didn’t really feel anything. I was just really tired all the time, and I would get irritated very quickly and didn’t have as much patience as I had had in the past. Just little things bugged me. I never sweat the little things, just the big stuff. Anyway, I was out running one morning, my daughter and I, and I bent down to tie my shoe, and my knee came up into my abdomen and I felt very full. That was pretty much all I felt, and as soon as I felt that I didn’t go for a run. I went home and lay down and had a good poke around at my belly, and I could feel a golf ball–sized lump to the left of my belly button. I was very thin and in very good shape, and you could almost see it when I was lying flat. So I made an appointment with the gynecologist and went and she was absolutely wonderful. I went for the appointment in the morning. I went for the ultrasound in the afternoon, and they told me right away they saw it. It was eight inches long and six inches wide, and he figured it weighed about eight pounds. It went from my right ovary and down underneath my uterus and came back up, and I was feeling the tip of it, which had come back up one side of my uterus. And that’s how we found it. He told me right away. I said, “Well, why don’t we do a biopsy right away?” And they said no. They didn’t want to do that at that point because they risked the possibility of leaving a little opening and the cells coming out to the abdomen. So I went in and had surgery, and sure enough it weighed close to eight pounds. It was just like I was pregnant. I waited three weeks for surgery , maybe a month, and by then I had gained 18 pounds and it was all fluid. I looked like I was six months pregnant. In fact, when I went into surgery, it was day surgery, and one of the ladies sitting next to me said, “Oh, do you know what you are going to have?” And trying not to embarrass her, I said, “Well, I am pretty sure what I am going to have.” And she said, “Oh, will it be a boy or a girl?” I...
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