Stage 1A Grade 1 Mucinous Adenocarcinoma

So it's official that I do indeed have ovarian cancer. Stage 1A grade 1 mucinous adenocarcinoma. If you are going to have ovarian cancer, this is a pretty ok diagnosis. It was isolated to the mass of the left ovary which is now gone. There's no traces of it in the right ovary, the fallopian tube or the appendix, which is really good. Survivability at this stage and grade is above 90% so that is good. The gynecologist-oncologist told me that I needed to hurry up with having the kids I want to have, then to call him for a complete hysterectomy, ideally in about 2-6 years. Meanwhile, I'm to follow up with my local doctor every 4 months until I'm ready to call up the specialist. It's good that he's not concerned enough to want me to follow up with him, and it's good that he's not concerned enough to want to do the complete hysterectomy now. I'm having a bit of a time adjusting to the idea of loosing that much of my body to a hysterectomy, not to mention the hormonal trauma of immediate menopause and the rocky road of hormone replacement and long list of side effects and direct negative effects on many other body systems. A friend counseled me to take it one day at a time though. That surgery is several years off, and there's lots of possible changes in treatments in several years. She also reminded me that tons of people walk around with stage 1 cancers and many never learn about it until they are quite old, if at all, so this isn't necessarily something to get too worked up over. I was rather lucky that my tumor was a fast growing type as that made it easily noticeable, saving me from a later staged cancer that would be much more serious. I've chosen to tell this to lots of people I'd normally call via this blog because I think it is much easier to understand this way, so don't feel slighted if I didn't call you!