Worried about ovarian mets...

Hi everyone...

I'm really worried right now & thought I would come to the one place I know everyone would understand...

Because I'm on Tamoxifen & because of symptoms I was having (abnormal bleeding, pelvic pain, weight loss, more fatigue than usual (which I had already thought was a lot!), lots of abdominal/pelvic bloating, etc.), my oncologist sent me to my ob/gyn at the end of Sept. for a
sonohysterogram and ultrasound.  She said there was just one little area on the sonohyst that could be questionable, but that she wasn't concerned, but then she said my right ovary was full of
cysts.  She thought they were all simple cysts, so she wasn't too worried, but she said she was concerned about a complex one on my left that had solid components to it.  She recommended having both ovaries removed.  She said she understood that I didn't feel ready to schedule the surgery (I'm 35 & hadn't quite accepted the idea of not having the little girl I always hoped to have), so she said I could wait until early November to repeat the ultrasound & then we could talk about whether it would be one or both ovaries.  I agreed. 

Then the Friday before last I started having a lot of pain on the lower left side and my belly was even more bloated than my ‘new normal'-I look like I'm about 6 months pregnant or so.  I waited until Tuesday morning to call the gyn and she told me to come in & they'd do another u/s.  When the tech was done, she told me she had to get the doctor.  The doctor (not my regular ob/gyn), came in with the pictures and told me that the cysts on the rights hadn't grown too
much and looked like simple cysts.  But that I had a ‘complex mass' on the left side that had tripled in size in less than 3 weeks and that she could see fluid in my pelvis.  She told me to go straight to the ER.

I was so surprised to be told to go to the ER that I didn't ask questions.  I was just trying to
figure out who would get my kids from school.  We spent the rest of the day/night in the ER where they did a CT  and gave me morphine and sent a trail of residents in.  In the end, they told me
that this was not a problem for the ER, that my oncologists and ob/gyn needed to manage my care outside of the emergency room.  They sent me home with a bottle of dilaudid and phenergan and told me to follow up with everyone in the morning.

At 8 the next morning, my regular ob/gyn called and told me she had looked at my scans and that I needed to come in for the surgery as soon as possible, that we wouldn't know if it was malignant until they biopsied it.  So I started to make arrangements for the kids, until my oncs intervened and said that I needed a gyn oncologist to do it so that it would be handled appropriately if it is a malignancy.  So my head was spinning at this point.  I told my ob/gyn thanks but no thanks, that I had been encouraged to have a gyn onc do it, and she said she understood completely, but that we only have one gyn onc group in our area and that I may have to wait too long for them to do it. 

So the next day I went to the hospital for my weekly Herceptin.  My regular nurse took a look at my belly and started making phone calls.  In the end, my hospital onc said that after looking at my belly and my scans, she would not treat me.  Plus, she called down to Emergency and had them send someone up to transport me down there.  Ugh...  Another day & night in the ER, only to be told the same thing as I was told on Tuesday.  They said that they were on to my oncologists' plans to get me a faster consult with gyn onc by going through the emergency room.  They
told me that this is not a surgery I want to have done as an emergency, that I would be much better off scheduling it outside of the ER.  So they sent me home with more painkillers and told me to wait it out until everything could be arranged.

The good thing that came out of the ER trip was that as I was walking out of the door, the PA (who had also taken care of me on Tuesday) gave me copies of my scan reports so I would have a better idea of what was going on.  So, from these I learned that they are calling it a ‘complex mass', it has vasculature, color Doppler shows blood flow through the middle of it, it has tripled in size in 3 weeks, has both solid and liquid areas.  My CT also showed a ‘moderate to large amount of free fluid in the pelvis and cul de sac.'  Most of this was news to me.

Of course I came home that night and googled everything in the reports and didn't feel so great about things afterward.  Now I'm just waiting for the only gyn onc group in the area to squeeze me in for a consult (they won't do surgery on someone they haven't consulted with).  They
just got all of my scans & paperwork and said the earliest they can do the consult is Nov. 4.  But I'm wondering if I'd just be better off having my regular gyn group (who says it can't wait) do
it since I'm concerned that it is cancer and that it's going to continue to grow... and there is just so much fluid in my belly.  I am "sleeping" in a chair at night because I'm having trouble breathing.  There is so much pressure on my back and in my abdomen & pelvis.  I think most of it is from all the fluid.

I have been pretty positive about all of the bc stuff since the beginning, but this new twist has me really worried.  Plus, I can understand why my oncologists want the gyn oncs to do the surgery (because they are less likely to rupture it & know how to contain it better if it is cancer), but I'm concerned that I'm going to continue to go downhill in the meantime and feel like maybe it would
be better to just have a regular gyn do it to get it over with...   

As you all know, the waiting is terrible.  I wish I knew if it was cancer or not--my gut is telling me that it doesn't look good... but I know it could still be benign...  I feel like I don't know which way is up anymore!!!