New Ill-Defined Mass

pinky104

I've had some minor pinching abdominal pain on my left side.  I had been drinking a lot of raspberry lemonade up to a couple of months ago and thought the abdominal pain and worsened reflux was because of that.  I thought I either gave myself something like gastritis or an ulcer, plus had my reflux, which I'm already on drugs for, get worse.  I saw a gastroenterologist because I also had difficulty swallowing fish oil pills.  He decided he'd set me up for an endoscopy with dilation of my esophagus in August, and he wrote off my abdominal pain as pain due to adhesions from surgery since the pain only lasts a few seconds at a time.  Then, he walked out the door.  After he left, I was bothered by the fact that my surgery was 4 years ago for my UPSC (stage IVb) and I'd only had this pain for a couple of months.  He'd gone on to another patient, so I was left wondering.  I had an appt. at my family physician's office later in the week, so I brought it up to him, and I also got tested to make sure I didn't have a UTI, as I'd had some symptoms of that and a history of frequent UTI's.  The urine culture was negative.  My PA suggested I have a CT scan and got one scheduled for the very next day.  Nothing was found on the side where I had the pain, but a mass was found on the opposite side.  A PET/CT was ordered for a few days later, and that showed a very small (1 cm. x 1.4 cm.) mass in my peritoneum.  I had my 6 month follow up with my oncologist's office scheduled for the following week, so my PA told me to leave it up to the oncologist what to do about it.  My CA 125 I had that week was lower than it had been since surgery, 6.3 instead of the 7's I've been having, my abdomen showed no evidence of fluid collection (ascites), and my lymph nodes were normal.  Today, I had an appt. at a different hospital where I'd had my original surgery done, with the gyn/onc who'd done my surgery.  He told me that he didn't know what the mass is.  He said it could be nothing or it could be cancer.  I asked his PA, who'd examined me first, if it could be scar tissue.  She told me it could be a fluid collection from having had my lymph nodes removed.  She said it sometimes happens years after surgery.  Anyway, the gyn/onc told me he didn't want to operate and find out that it's nothing, so he's going to wait 3 mos.,  then order labs including my CA 125 and a CT scan to see if the mass has grown.  If it has, I'll have to have it out at that point.  I'm left hanging, but at least I can enjoy my summer and go on my vacation as planned.  And if the results are that I need the surgery, I'd rather have it in the fall when I don't have as much going on.  Four years is a long time to have been cancer free and (possibly) have it reoccur, but I recently met someone who'd had it reoccur after a much longer time, and she'd also had the same kind I had.  It just means we all have to be hypervigilant after we've had cancer.  My gyn/onc gave me a copy of my scan reports, where I saw that I had scattered diverticula, so now I'm thinking they might be what's causing the pain on the other side.  At times, the pain seems food-related, but I'm not bothered by the foods that normally cause problems with diverticula.  Things like plain crackers seem to bother me, but I can usually eat nuts with no symptoms at all.  I'll write again when I know more in September.

NoTimeForCancer

Pinky, that is why I asked a

Pinky, that is why I asked a few weeks ago the question, "How did you know you had a recurrence?"  The wise women of this board said, "know your body" and I guess that is true.  You are listening to your body and checking things out.  I can understand second guessing yourself.

I hope it is nothing and hope you can try to relax during the three months.

pinky104

NoTimeForCancer said:

Pinky, that is why I asked a

Pinky, that is why I asked a few weeks ago the question, "How did you know you had a recurrence?"  The wise women of this board said, "know your body" and I guess that is true.  You are listening to your body and checking things out.  I can understand second guessing yourself.

I hope it is nothing and hope you can try to relax during the three months.

Hoping It's Nothing

I hope it's nothing, too.  I know that unless it grows very rapidly, it won't be half as bad as it was the last time.  I had my uterus, both tubes and ovaries, omentum, and a part of my small intestine removed, with debulking, and also had removal of my gallbladder for gallstones and removal of my appendix while they were at it.  I hadt two blood transfusions before I even left the hospital and one afterwards during chemo.  I was in for 6 days after surgery.  Two years later, I had an incisional hernia repair.  I expected that to be easy, but it wasn't.  They pumped me full of gas which hurt like hell on the opposite side from my surgery.  I'm guessing  I'll probably have robotic surgery next time if they can get to the spot using a robot.  I was originally supposed to have that until my gyn/onc saw my CT scan report just before the procedure and told me I had too much cancer for that method.  I had told my boss I'd be back to work in 2 weeks, but I never did go back.  I decided to collect social security instead, and I'm very glad I did.

Double Whammy

pinky104 said:

Hoping It's Nothing

I hope it's nothing, too.  I know that unless it grows very rapidly, it won't be half as bad as it was the last time.  I had my uterus, both tubes and ovaries, omentum, and a part of my small intestine removed, with debulking, and also had removal of my gallbladder for gallstones and removal of my appendix while they were at it.  I hadt two blood transfusions before I even left the hospital and one afterwards during chemo.  I was in for 6 days after surgery.  Two years later, I had an incisional hernia repair.  I expected that to be easy, but it wasn't.  They pumped me full of gas which hurt like hell on the opposite side from my surgery.  I'm guessing  I'll probably have robotic surgery next time if they can get to the spot using a robot.  I was originally supposed to have that until my gyn/onc saw my CT scan report just before the procedure and told me I had too much cancer for that method.  I had told my boss I'd be back to work in 2 weeks, but I never did go back.  I decided to collect social security instead, and I'm very glad I did.

Good luck in September

Don't you just hate being told it could be nothing or it could be cancer?  I guess that's the way it goes in the world of oncology, and it sounds like the wait and see approach is ok with you.  I'm hoping it's nothing, too and you remain cancer free.

Hugs,

Suzanne