WHEN SIZE MATTERS - How a (Sort of) Silent Health Scare Taught Me To Listen to My Body

I suppose I could have titled this blog post, "What I Did on my Summer Vacation," but truth be told, "vacation" is the wrong word to use when describing my July and August. Consider this my PSA to all women out there, regardless of your age.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been fairly health-conscious, paying attention to my body and trying to do my best by it.

I hike it, feed it good food, ensure it gets enough sleep, and try to keep it strong.

Most of the time, I listen to it. After all, no one knows our bodies like we do, right? This is why it is so strange that I ignored what, deep down, I knew was a problem.

The Beginning

Let me give you a brief preface (I promise it's short). I am a 64-year-old woman who went through menopause at age 52. I breezed through it with a few irritating hot flashes, but nothing major. However, shortly afterward, I noticed I was starting to gain a little weight around my belly. It didn’t really impact my day-to-day life, but it did piss me off because, as I said before, I am a pretty disciplined person. I chalked it up to “Life as a Post-Menopausal Woman” and just got on with things.

In Denial

But my little Buddha belly just kept getting bigger — a little round hard ball of fat.

I had cared for my mother for the last few years of her life before she succumbed to dementia, and I figured this “hard belly fat” was “cortisol fat.”

All the online influencer wellness coaches talk about it 24/7, don’t they? Stress fat. And caring for a loved one with dementia is VERY stressful. It made sense. So, on I went, embracing baggy sweatshirts and sleeping with a foam body pillow to cushion my belly.

I continued to ignore it. I continued to ignore increasing bouts of indigestion, constipation, and cramping.

I continued to ignore the need to pee all the time. I just figured I was getting old.

On the last day of June, soon after dinner, I suddenly began to feel really awful. The intense indigestion turned into crippling pain. I was nauseous. My legs were numb down to my knees. I could barely move.

A Very Scary Night

Freaked out, my husband drove me straight to the ER, trying desperately to avoid every bump and pothole in the road.

Luckily, I was admitted fairly quickly, and when the attending doctor performed an examination and ultrasound, I saw the look of shock on his face.

“Um,” he said. “You have a huge mass in your abdomen.”

Now, that isn’t something anyone wants to hear. Ever. But off I went for a CT scan, which confirmed that, yes, I did indeed have a mass that measured 18 cm in length.

My husband and I were terrified, and I was scheduled for emergency surgery first thing in the morning. As my uterus looked “a little dodgy,” they told me they thought it would be best if they gave me a radical hysterectomy as well as a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.

“Take it all,” I said. “I’ve had my kids. Free up some space down there.” But I was terrified, and so ashamed of myself for ignoring what was clearly a cry from my body for help.

Long story short, two days later, I was back home, having learned that my tumour was called a mature cystic teratoma or a dermoid cyst.

Everything they removed was okay; all I had to do was heal up and grow a brain. (More on that in a minute.)

A Giant Ovarian Dermoid Teratoma

Dermoid cysts are strange monsters, (by the way, the latin word actually translates to "Little Monster). Benign 99% of the time, they are comprised of a bunch of different tissues, including oil, skin cells, nerve tissue, hair, and — oh my God — teeth! SOmetimes even an eyeball. I wish I were kidding. I'm not.

Mine did not have teeth, but it did have hair. So gnarly, right?

Mine (also called a mature teratoma) weighed almost seven pounds and had torsioned (twisted) in THREE places, cutting off blood flow, hence the numbness and excruciating pain.

Here it is, all 6.5 lbs of it. I called it “Ripley,” a nod to the movie ALIEN.

While all this was traumatic, to say the least, it could have been so much worse. It could have happened while I was out hiking. The dang thing could have burst, I could have become septic. It could have gone travelled to my brain … yada yada yada.

A Wake-up Call

Here’s the thing, though. If I am honest with myself, I think I knew all along that something wasn’t right. But I continued to sweep it all under the proverbial rug, hoping that some magical manifesting miracle would simply resolve my issues.

There was no magical miracle. I feel now like I betrayed my body. It had been talking to me for years, and I had refused to listen. Why? Because I was a giant chicken shit when it comes to doctors, hospitals, and things. And I rarely get sick. I don’t even like taking a Tylenol unless I really have to.

The dangerous thing is that I had been listening to YouTube and TikTok health “pros” and Instagram “Wellness Gurus,” and while some of their content is valuable, so much of it is really misleading . You have to be so careful.

Yes, eating enough protein is essential. Yes, exercise is good. Yes, strength training is critical as we age, and yes, magnesium is an excellent supplement for older women to consider.

BUT… no, you do NOT need to take 674 supplements daily to improve your health.

Red light therapy will NOT cure your cancer. A castor oil pack will not dissolve a 7-pound "Little Monster."

So, please, my sisters. Be discerning. Verify the credibility of your sources, and consult your doctor for routine tests on a regular basis.

Don’t be like me and put your head in the sand until something catastrophic happens.

Listen to your body when it tries to talk to you and treat it with the love and respect it deserves.

A Promise for the Future

I feel as though I’ve been given a new lease on life. In fact, I haven’t felt this great since I was in my 40s. I now have an actual doctor (finally!), and was given a clean bill of health at my last check-up.

Thank you, body, for carrying me around all these years and for your patience. I’m sorry I ignored you; I promise that things will be different from now on.