2015 was a year full of medical complications for me. Not that 2016 has been any different, but at least this year, there are less unknowns. In 2015, I faced pancreatic pseudocysts, persistent biliary strictures leading to jaundice (that went undiagnosed for too long), increased pancreas pain, four ERCPs (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography), and hospitalization from what looked like liver abscesses. After that week in the hospital in November, I went on heavy-duty antibiotics for about seven weeks. Once that course was finished and Infectious Diseases declared me highly likely to be infection-free but a CT scan showed that the spots on my liver had grown, my gastroenterology surgeon, Dr. Hirose, decided it was time for a biopsy. That liver biopsy was a traumatic experience in and of itself (one that deserves its own post).
During the week I waited for my biopsy results, I was lost in a miasma of fear. Anyone who has waited for biopsy results knows the feeling. For me in particular, there was a sharper, somehow more personal fear than if I had been in danger of any other kind of cancer. For example, if I had been waiting for biopsy results for possible skin cancer, I would have felt very differently than I felt waiting for biopsy results for possible pancreatic cancer. Of course, we didn’t know at the time what type of cancer it could be if it was cancer, but all signs pointed toward pancreatic cancer. Also throughout 2015, I had been in consultation for total pancreatectomy surgery at Johns Hopkins’ special clinic for this procedure, where Dr. Singh explained to me my theoretical risk of pancreatic cancer. Patients with SPINK1 hereditary pancreatitis are known to have increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer. However, the particular risk for different genetic markers of hereditary pancreatitis is not always known. While there has been enough research on the PRSS1 mutation to know that it carries a very high lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer, there is not yet enough data to quantify the cancer risk for my mutation, PN34S. I think I remember Dr. Singh saying, as he literally sketched out these complex ideas on the paper exam table cover, that my lifetime pancreatic cancer risk was likely somewhere between 4% and 60%. This is a huge and vague range, but the numbers were concrete enough to bring the idea home to me: there was a very good chance I would develop pancreatic cancer at some point in my life. That’s why I was determined to pursue total pancreatectomy, my only chance of eliminating that risk. There was no way to know at the time that my risk was actually 100%. It’s even possible that I already had pancreatic cancer when Dr. Singh and I were discussing my risk in abstract terms. So after my liver biopsy, I sat in waiting for a very personal, very real fear to come true: that my pancreas, which had literally sickened me for so long, could turn so very ominous. Since my diagnosis with pancreatitis at age nine, I have had a very complex relationship with my pancreas. It’s not even a love-hate relationship, which would make sense given the circumstances. Rather, it’s something more like a vaguely confused attachment. I’m sure people expect me to hate my pancreas, or at least to wish it gone. While I have certainly wanted it out of my body for over a year now, that desire has always had to push past my deep connection to my pancreas. Childhood illness has taught me to respect and value all parts of my body, because each organ and gland really does do incredible work every day to keep me alive and functioning. But the gland I feel the deepest attachment to will always be my pancreas. We are in this together, she and I. But for that week of waiting in January 2016, I couldn’t quite stomach the idea that my pancreas would do something so horrible to me. It felt like a betrayal, and I didn’t want to think that my beloved partner organ could go rogue in such a big way. I thought I had tried to care for her, but now I wondered whether I had taken her for granted, or unwittingly thrown too much difficulty her way. Maybe my eight and a half years without pancreatitis symptoms (which had ended sometime in 2014) had left me lazy. Maybe my recent paleo diet had funneled too much fat through my gut to my beleaguered pancreas. Maybe I hadn’t thought of her enough lately, so she had retaliated. I’ve read enough cancer memoirs already to know that I wasn’t alone in feeling this kind of searching regret and bodily guilt. More than anything, though, I didn’t want to follow my pancreas down this new road. I felt she was trying to lead me into a long and dark underground tunnel that I might never escape from. And I’m claustrophobic. At times I felt angry, thinking how dare she try to hurt me so much, how dare she try to pull rank. At other times I felt helpless, dwarfed in the shadow of my all-powerful pancreas. As it turns out, she just might hate me as much as I love her. She may have had it in for me all along. Or maybe she’s just as desperate to stay alive as the rest of me is. Most of the time now, in spite of her supreme power to rule my life and health, I like to be sweet and gentle to her, to imagine her shriveled and shaking inside my upper abdomen, nestled against the back wall, just trying to make it.
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Authorchildren's librarian, Smithie, writer, reader, cook, gardener, cancer patient, medical oddity, PANCAN patient advocate, #chemosurvivor, #spoonie Categories
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