Yes, I’ve changed the color of my cancer awareness ribbon. The pretty teal one was only for ovarian—my cancer is more generalized: endometrial/mullerian. Besides, I was bored with the blue.

Anyways, I’ve had an interesting day. My daughter and I traveled this morning to Little Rock to the Cancer Institute there to find out whether they would perform surgery to remove all my affected organs, which might give me a better chance of beating this cancer.

Before we even got there, we had an adventure. We had just taken the three-lane offramp and were stopped in a line of vehicles at the traffic lights when a firetruck and another emergency vehicle arrived with sirens and horns blowing. The cars in the center lane tried to move into our lane to give the big honking trucks room on the far left to get by. The vehicle in the center lane, to our left, began to back up, and my daughter laid on her horn to alert the driver that we were there—which the driver did not hear—and yeah, she hit our SUV. So, with only 45 minutes before my appointment with the surgeon, we had to contact 911 to get a trooper to come take our information before we could drive away.

We could not have been hit by a nicer lady. She took full responsibility, then saw my chemo hat and lack of eyebrows and told me she was a 15-year breast cancer survivor and asked about mine. She’s a nurse, teaching other nurses. The trooper was a very serious looking individual but very efficient. We made it to my appointment on time.

So, now for the news. Yes, I am scheduled for surgery at the beginning of April! They are going to take everything they find that’s affected by cancer—ovaries, uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, omentum, and lymph nodes—plus anything else they discover once they’re in. It’s going to be a huge incision down the middle of my abdomen. Before I was scheduled, I told him the only thing I was concerned about was recovering in time for pool season. During the examination, he told me he was surprised that my uterus was a normal size now and that my cervix looked perfect. Well, of course, I wanted to tell him. I’m the perfect patient. Lots of fight and positivity left in me! My daughter is more worried about how all of this is going to go down. She has to have everything planned. Who’s going to stay with me in the hospital? Do we need another lift-recliner chair for me to sleep in because she’s sure getting in and out of bed will be too hard for me. She has to shop for dresses for me because she says I won’t want to wear anything that’s binding around my waist. And on, and on…

The nurse I saw at the beginning of all my appointments today (surgeon, bloodwork, EKG, X-ray) took my blood pressure after we rushed in fresh from the accident, and she told me she was very surprised my blood pressure was so normal after all the excitement. I told her I don’t worry about things until I know I have a problem. Why flap my wings like an excitable chicken and stress myself out? Right now, everything is wonderful. My latest bloodwork shows that everything’s trending perfectly. I’m in remission and heading into surgery to further attack this insidious disease. I’m here now.