It's official...I'm having a....

Really big (benign!) cyst removed on Tuesday.

Yeah...good times.

And by really big, I mean 22 cm x 23 cm x 9 cm (or, in inches, 9 x 9 x 3).

This is sort of a weird and interesting story, and one that has thrust my brain and emotions back in to the land of infertility.  I think I have worked through most of it, but I thought I would lay in out here to fully flesh out what I am thinking and to share with anyone who comes to this blog.

I started to notice that something didn't feel quite right about a year ago.  I had started a semi-regular exercise routine with a good friend.  Although I was seeing major improvements in my stamina (when you start at the bottom, you can only go up!), something in my belly just didn't feel right.  The feeling was hard to explain.  I had a sharp pain in the lower left of my pelvis and a feeling of fullness in my belly in general.  It made exercising more and more difficult, particularly the pain in my lower left abdomen.  I made an appointment with my primary care doctor.

She sent me out for an ultrasound.  The technician was taking a very long time to do the ultrasound.  That sent up some red flags on my part.  She told me that I had a lot of free fluid in my abdomen and my uterus was really tipped forward.  As in, the top of the uterus was pointing to the ceiling when I was lying on my back.

I believe that was on a Thursday in May.  The very next day, after I had eaten dinner and gone to bed for the night, I woke up at about 11 pm with an absolutely terrible pain in my abdomen.  All I could do was moan pitifully and lie on the couch.  At maybe 2 in the morning, I told my husband that we better go to the emergency room.  There, they gave me wonderful drugs and started to look for the cause of the pain.

An ultrasound was performed and she also noted a lot of free fluid in my abdomen,  she also looked at my gall bladder and saw a very nicely-sized gallstone.  The doctors were pretty sure that was the cause of the pain, but decided that they would also perform a cat scan,  I remember the doctor filling me in on the results of all my tests and with their recommendations. They consisted of the followig: you should make an appointment with a general surgeon about the gallstone, but for the love of all that is holy, SEE YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT THIS THING IN YOUR BELLY. CALL FIRST THING ON MONDAY MORNING. HOLY SHIT. As you can imagine, I was motivated to see someone.

And I'll leave it for here now.  Given that the thought of surgery gives me insomnia, I will likely have time to post over the next few nights.  Until then interwebs, I'm off to browse imgur.com!