Help support ☀️Mysty☀️ during cancer treatment

Thank you for pausing here to learn about my fundraiser. I’m looking for your support as I go through treatment for advanced stage 4 ovarian cancer, which has metastasized into multiple tumours throughout my abdominal cavity, including my liver and peritoneum. My cancer is incurable, so I am fundraising to be able to spend as much quality time with my loved ones as I can before I am no longer able. My fiancé, Russ, has taken a leave from work to take care of me, so we are without income for the foreseeable future. Your support will help us meet our monthly expenses, both medical and otherwise, and provide us with much needed peace of mind. Rather than worry about unexpected medical expenses and covering our monthly bills, we can focus on gaining strength, building memories, and loving each other. If you know Russ and me, you know it’s difficult for us to ask for financial support, but I’m at a stage (stage 4, in fact [wink]) where I can’t let fear hold me back from asking for what I need. Please know this: we won’t give up the fight or stop expecting a miracle, but I need Russ by my side through this journey. I need to spend as much quality time as I can with my loved ones in the time I have left however long that may be, so here we are asking for your help. ☀️

Mysty and Russ (a.k.a. “Rusty”) summer 2018

That was the short version for all you busy folks. Here’s the longer version that you can come back to when you have a few moments to rub together. It’s a pretty crazy story. Go grab a coffee or a tea and get comfy. I’ll wait for you here….

….You’re back? Okay. Let’s get started.

On May 1, I went to the emergency room for pelvic pain that I’ve been experiencing intermittently for over a year. Hold on. Let me back up a bit. The truth is I’ve had an angry womb for a very long time. It took years before I was finally diagnosed with endometriosis after which I had a hysterectomy and partial oophorectomy in 2018 (translation: I had my uterus and one ovary removed). Things were feeling good for a while and then the pain started again just over a year ago.

I went to St. Joseph’s Urgent Care in May of 2022 because something just had to be wrong given the amount of pain I was experiencing. The doctor there informed me I had a cyst on my remaining ovary and referred me to a gynecologist. (It turned out to be the same gynecologist that did my hysterectomy). I waited around 5 months for that appointment and, when I finally got there, I was told nothing was wrong with me.

That has to be one of the worst feelings in the world — to feel so much pain, so certainly and for so long and then be told it’s nothing. It’s a sure fire way to make someone feel insane and terribly alone. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not alone. I’ve had incredibly supportive people around me throughout this — Russ, my parents, my sister, my bestie — but who you really want to support you when you’re feeling so much pain is your doctor. That didn’t happen.

Mysty and son, Jacob, on his 26th BD, April 2023

Let me backtrack again for a sec. I should have told you that I had a follow-up ultrasound in July of 2022. That ultrasound showed a pretty unremarkable ovary, which is to say that the cyst that was there in May was not there in July. So, when my gynecologist appointment eventually came around in October, the July results dominated everything. It didn’t matter that I had continued to experience the same intermittent pain since then. My ovary was clear in July. End of story.

I had a couple of follow-up appointments with the gynecologist to the same end. The doctor believed that the problem might be urological, so she recommended I get a referral to a urologist. I trudged back to the walk-in clinic for said referral. (Oh, did I forget to mention that I don’t have a family doctor? Yes indeedy. That’s added a layer of interest to an already exciting healthcare experience.)

My appointment with the urologist was May 10 of this year. Almost a year to the day from my first visit to Urgent Care. Unfortunately my health took a really quick turn for the worst around mid-April. I’ll be honest — I chalked it up to being menopausal and overweight with perhaps a touch of the flu. When it didn’t improve and the pain continued to get worse, I finally went to emergency at University Hospital. That was May 1st.

When I look back on that day, my heart really breaks for that woman who went to emerg looking for help, but who fully expected to be told “You’re overweight and menopausal. There’s nothing wrong. Go home and lose some weight.” That’s not what happened.

Instead, I was very kindly, very awkwardly told I have cancer and lots of it. I was handed my radiology report, a prescription for painkillers and a referral to Urgent Medicine at Victoria Hospital. I don’t mean to sound bitter about that emergency experience. The doctor and nurses were extremely kind to me and it was pretty obvious that they don’t hand out cancer diagnoses from the emergency room very often. In fact, whenever I tell a doctor - any doctor - that I found out about my cancer in emerg, they wince, ask incredulously “You found out in emerg?” and shake their head in what appears to be an interesting combination of shame and sympathy.

As I mentioned, I have a lot of cancer. It’s spread throughout my abdominal cavity, but appears to have originated in the ovary, spread to the peritoneum, and on from there.

The treatment I’ll be undergoing is debulking surgery (hopefully mid to late-June) followed by chemotherapy. I wish I could tell you that this would provide a cure, but it won’t. It buys me some better quality time with my loved ones. So I suppose that’s what I’m really asking you for — some better quality time with my loved ones.

Thank you for reading about my journey so far. Just writing about it has helped, so thanks for that little unexpected gift.

I’m wishing you love and light ☀️ in everything you do and I truly hope someone makes you, and you make someone, smile today.