This is a new blog series about the chapter of my life where I’m on the other side. If you missed the introductory article, start here.
I thought I was going to die for months.
I was stuck in a cycle of fear and days felt like years.
I felt like a tree that had been uprooted and replanted in an unfamiliar climate, as if its leaves were withered and no longer firmly rooted in the ground.
After a year of major life changes, my body was screaming for equilibrium, whatever that means (and have I ever really experienced that?).
It felt like my body was telling me to rest. Like understanding what it means to really, truly rest.
However, I had lived in “on mode” for so long that I was not good at resting. Even when I felt like I wasn’t doing anything, my mind was still working. My brain had no off switch.
So instead of resting I blew up.
I began to fear the most mundane things. I felt scared from the moment I woke up until the moment I laid my head down to sleep. Every little symptom, every sleepless night, every unexpected pain became terrifying confirmation that something was wrong with me and within me.
Fear suddenly felt all-encompassing, but the initial seeds of fear were slowly growing after the routine steps that had been planted.
fear begins
The fear began with a diagnosis I never expected.
After my sister made a bland comment about getting a Pap smear, I decided I should schedule one for myself. I’ve made a lot of changes over the past year, so prioritizing my health seemed like a solid choice.
I expected the appointment to proceed, as with a Pap smear, with the usual discomfort and feeling of being overexposed. When I stepped on the scale for the first time in a year in the doctor’s office, I realized that I had unintentionally lost a lot of weight. I felt my stomach drop.
As I entered the doctor’s office, my mind began to oscillate between worrying that I had unexpectedly lost weight and worrying that the doctor would discover the underwear I had secretly hidden under my neatly folded clothes on the chair.
Then I wondered why I was worried about her seeing my underwear when my private parts were about to be displayed inches from her face.
As I sat nervously in the exam chair with sweaty palms, the doctor came into the room and said, “I’m really looking forward to being here.”
After a few routine questions and a lot of unpleasant prodding, I left the appointment feeling glad it was over and ready to go home and ruminate about my weight.
I tried to forget the experience until a few days later, when I woke up to a notification on my phone. The test results are out.
I opened the message and prepared to text my sister about the usual results.
HPV diagnosis
When I read the word “ABNORMAL” my heart sank.
My eyes went back and forth between the words HPV…high risk…abnormal. There must have been a mistake.
How can this happen? Where did this come from? How long has this been there? Was my last partner faithful? Where did I go wrong?
The worst part was that there were abnormal cells in my cervix. The doctor’s note said a colposcopy was needed to determine if I had cervical cancer.
My heart was glued to the word cancer. A wave of nausea washed over me.
My fingers were frantically typing as I combed through Reddit threads, trying to understand what HPV is, how bad it can be, and how likely it is to turn into cancer.
I learned how common HPV diagnosis is, even though no one in my personal life has ever heard of it. I read story after story about cervical biopsies to prepare myself and calm my excited mind. Was it just a pinch feeling or was the pain going to double? It seems like everyone online had a different experience.
descent
Since then, my mind has been on overload. My search history was full of results related to HPV, cervical biopsies, and unexpected weight loss. There was so much conflicting information online, and one rabbit hole led to another.
To make matters worse, a few days after my Pap smear, I felt a popping sensation on the right side of my pelvis while exercising. It wasn’t painful, but it was scary enough that I stopped training early.
The next day, I felt like someone was digging their thumb into the crease where my thigh meets my pelvis. I felt defeated when another source of pain was added to the chronic back pain that had been bothering me for three years. How was I going to deal with this on top of the fact that it already hurt to sit and bend over?
I started dreading getting up in the morning.
Despite all the work I have done on my mindset (and have been blogging on the subject for over a decade), every attempt to focus on the positive has proven futile. Cancer or not, I told myself I would be okay, but those words were empty. All my hopeful thoughts kept redirecting to the worst-case scenario.
Little did I know, this was just the beginning of a spiral of terror that would last for months.
Disclaimer: This post documents my personal history with HPV and health concerns and should not be taken as medical advice.
