I haven’t posted in the past week because I’ve been busy freaking the heck out. About a month ago, I went to the ER with pelvic pain so bad I was sure I’d ruptured a bowel, or been fed cheese in my sleep, or maybe implanted with a gut-bursting alien. An ultrasound revealed that I had some cysts on my right ovary, two to be exact. They had burst, thus the gripping pain.

My doctor wanted to see what happened in a month, whether they would go away or stick around. They’ve stuck, and they’re not just cysts, they’re actually endometriomas, which I’m to understand will not go away and will likely only grow. It’s been suggested I have surgery, both to remove the right ovary and the pirate cysts holding it hostage, and to allow my doctor to take a look around and see whether the endometriosis has progressed very far.

The first thing I did when I got this diagnosis was to drink so much vegetable juice I thought I was going to turn orange. Well that’s not entirely true; the first thing I did was sob, while walking out to the car. In the back of my mind I was thinking of all the women that had been to this specialist of mine who had gotten much worse news. I was remembering my friend, a survivor of cervical cancer, and wondering what it must have been like for her to walk off the elevator after getting her diagnosis, moving toward the doors out into the rainy parking lot, everything the same, yet everything different.

It’s just a freaking ovary, I kept telling myself. And it is. I’m done having kiddos, so fertility isn’t an issue. It could be so much worse. And yet it’s shaken me up a great deal, to know that I have to go into surgery at some point in the coming weeks, to know I’ll have only half the hormone production I had before, although I’m told that one ovary can take care of my whole body just fine.

So I started drinking juice. Twice a day for the last few days, I’ve stood at my counter pumping romaine, lemons, apples, ginger, celery, carrots, and broccoli through my Breville like my life depended on it. I’ve avoided sugar, and even wheat which, according to some web pages, isn’t good for endometriosis sufferers. I have this crazy hope that I’ll somehow get cured, that I’ll go back to the doctor for my surgery and they’ll do a preliminary ultrasound and find the endometriomas gone (I’d even accept “shrunk considerably”). The likely reality, however, is that a couple weeks of raw food isn’t going to save me. I’m going to have to go through with this.

Wish me luck! If you have any advice or comments, feel free to post them here or email me at hollie@hollie.us. I’m happy to read everything.