'My diagnosis wasn’t a death sentence, but it felt like one. I was in constant, agonizing pain, and the treatments still weren’t helping.'
"My diagnosis wasn’t a death sentence, but it felt like one. I was in constant, agonizing pain, and the treatments still weren’t helping."“It’s cancer. Ovarian. Stage IIIC,” she said into the phone in an eerily calm way. Actually, calm is what she would remain over the next 1½ years of her cancer battle ― the opposite of my assumed reaction to such a diagnosis, which would be abject panic.
The next doctor told her it was “intestinal fissures” and “kidney stones.” Still, no one took the time to test or scan Tori ― they just gave her some antibiotics and sent her on her way. She didn’t get some actual answers until a romantic date with her boyfriend ended in disaster when Tori collapsed on a bathroom floor and was rushed to the emergency room. ,” the nurse practitioner declared during my visit to address my symptoms.
We messaged on Facebook constantly about what was going on in our own personal health lives ― something that most 25-year-olds don’t ever have to consider. Although Tori’s situation was much more dire than mine, she had so much empathy for my pain and desperation. She was filled with it, too. Her surgeries were intense and painful, and the chemo took a toll on her vitality. We joked that we felt like old ladies.
As a juxtaposition to Tori’s calm, measured state, even with a very serious cancer diagnosis and not many options, I spent most days crying or falling down rabbit holes online, reading horror stories about people who had interstitial cystitis and how they were trapped in their pain, never to be released from the horrid cycle of illness. My diagnosis wasn’t a death sentence, but it felt like one. I was in constant, agonizing pain, and the treatments still weren’t helping.
I started physical therapy, which I continued to do for four years after my first surgery. It was a godsend. However long it took, I was determined to continue my sessions. I got to a place where I was certain that, in time, I would recover. I would move on. I would thrive in my career. I would meet someone, and I would have a life.
Sex-specific disorders are even more complex: Many gynecologists tell women to lose weight, to reduce stress or just to go on birth control instead of really taking a deeper look at what’s going on.
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