Thursday

It's here. Finally. I made it. With my sanity intact? Debatable. My three biggest fears in life are: 1. Fear of the unknown 2. Spiders 3. Heights/Falling. I've had to face fear #1 head on for the last 9 days. Probably the worst 9 days of my life. The hardest, scariest, most emotional, anxious-driven days of my life. It was a constant battle to bring myself out of my scary, faithless fear, to reality. I have felt your prayers and fasts. Boy, I could go on for hours with my testimony about those two things. Your faith has carried me when my brave faced masked my faltering faith. Your prayers have brought me comfort in a time when I've needed it the most. Your service has humbled me to show me my weaknesses and need to be a better person. I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone, but the growth and blessings have been abundant.

I'm not a sit around and wait kind of gal. When we got engaged, I wanted to get married in 8 weeks. My rational, kind, Dallin convinced me with the holidays coming up, that wasn't such a good idea. I cried because it meant more waiting. From the time I even THOUGHT the first thought about a mission until I had my mission call in hand was 6 weeks. I don't mess around. This has been torture going against everything in my being.

My doctor called last night with some results. The nurses had told me that the blood test was sent off, but not ordered until Monday so they didn't have results. Whether they were lying or the doctor pushed through the results, I don't care, I was just glad to have SOMETHING. That the process was beginning.

My CEA (ovarian cancer) levels were less than 0.3 with range being from 0-4 so those looked great. My CA 125 (cancer antigen) levels were 59.4 with range being from 0-34. So those were high. Do those mean I have cancer? No. Does it mean we're concerned? Yes. That's why we're doing the MRI to figure this all out. What those tests tell us is that the mass didn't originate in my ovary, but could have in my kidney or colon. Where I haven't had any glaring problems with those organs, I'm encouraged. If they were in the 200s they'd be a lot more worried; especially with the size of the mass, I'd think that the CA numbers would be higher. The CA level being high is a little scary though. But you know what's more scary? NOT KNOWING and my imagination. I feel a huge sense of relief even knowing this teeny bit of information. My brain MRI is scheduled for Monday evening. He was also concerned that my Prolactin levels were high but they were less than 100 so if we're dealing with a tumor, it's small and benign and treatable with medicine. It shouldn't effect my fertility too much either since I was ovulating on the Clomid but we'd just have to more aggressively stimulate my ovaries.

I also fought it out with my insurance today and got myself a case manager. The three weeks I've been on Altius has been a nightmare. They've screwed up my information, deactivated my account, denied claims for reasons they wouldn't tell me, given me a bazillion different answers every time I called that I told them it was ENOUGH. I have enough stress on my plate that they were just adding to and I couldn't deal anymore. With a case manager, she'll know what's going on medically so I don't have to explain it every time, and will be familiar with my policy and be able to give me correct answers when I call in. One point of contact, no talking to the morons in customer service (no offense if you know someone who works there).

So I'm feeling 80% better than I have. The last two days have been so hard but here we are. Stay tuned.