Page 22 of Coastal Rewind

Owen panicked as it spilled out of me.

My mom was diagnosed with endometriosis when she was in her early teens. She didn’t think much of it at the time and just worked through the pain. When she met my dad, they didn’t hesitate to have kids. After Keegan and Nolan were born, there was a night where she had been screaming in pain so badly my dad rushed her to the emergency room in sheer panic. He held her hand as they ran tests and found tumors on her ovaries.

At that point, the doctors still didn’t worry too much. The tumors were benign and her bloodwork was normal. Her primary care doctor suggested she get some genetic testing to make sure there was nothing deeper going on, and it turned out she had mutations in both the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. She already had five kids so the doctors didn’t think having another was a possibility. They told my mom the risks. They told her that the surge of hormones would put her at risk for various cancers.

They told her she’d already pushed her luck and somehow survived.

She got pregnant anyway.

The combinations of her hormones and genetics were just too much for her body to handle. She looked the devil in the eyes one too many times and her luck had run out. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer six months after Maeve was born and she died a year and a half later.

The disease took her from our lives so rapidly that we barely had time to even realize what was happening.

When I was eighteen and sitting in that sterile doctor’s office with my dad at my side, they told me that I not only was the spitting image of my mother, but genetically we were the same. That was also the same visit that the doctor informed me that my asshole high school ex-boyfriend knocked me up, and I lost the baby without even knowing I was pregnant.

They performed an ultrasound which led to a biopsy of a mass on my right ovary. The tests all came back benign, but there was always the risk. I had the option at the time to have the mass removed, but that left me with one working ovary and the chance that it could happen again. It was a big decision to make at eighteen, and it had been on the forefront of mind since.

That mass lived inside me like the constant, morbid reminder I was broken.

It was my body warning me that if I went down that road, I’d meet the same fate my mother did. That was if I could even have a viable pregnancy. The gaggle of cysts that painfully remind me of their existence for ten days a month were telling that my body was, in fact, not a temple.

I’d tried living a clean and peaceful lifestyle in hopes to reduce stress. I’d gone to multiple doctors to ask about treatments and the odds that my genetic makeup would kill me. They all came back with the same answer: nothing.

They could remove the mass, but no one could be sure that another wouldn’t grow again. For now, it wasn’t hurting me, but it was like a ticking time bomb.

There was no guarantee I’d get cancer, but the surge in hormones, or the stress of a miscarriage, would increase my risk every time I tried.

A few years ago, I decided to accept that natural pregnancy could be completely off the table. I stored my eggs as a safety precaution. If I wanted even a sliver of a chance to have a family, I needed to preserve what I could.

It was the last time I had been hopeful.

The retrieval went fine, but very few of my eggs were viable. Even though I was only in my twenties, what they were able to get was a pile of wrinkly sacks that were less than likely to result in a pregnancy.

That basically took in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy off the table. Even science couldn’t help me at this point.

And what if I had a baby and then the stress on my body was too much? I’d leave my family in the same manner my mother did. The thought of that broke my heart in half.

Living in the constant fear was harder than just living a life of solitude. It was lonely, but at least I’d be alive and not leave anyone to clean up my messes.

“I’ve talked to the doctors. They all say the same thing. The only way I can guarantee that I virtually reduce my chances to zero is just taking the whole thing out.” I stood and started pacing in front of my brother.

“You’re getting the hysterectomy?” Owen looked stunned.

I’d told him this was my last resort. He knew I was waiting until after I was thirty and then I was cutting the damn thing out of me. Now, I was pushing thirty-one and it was time.

I nodded, forcing the tears to stay at bay.

This was my choice, and I was sure of it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t hope that over the last twelve years there would be some mystery cure that would let me still have a family.

I’d been existing in a pit of denial but it was time to face reality.

While other girls played princess, I played mom. When other girls talked about their dream careers, I said I was going to be a teacher. When other girls talked about their dream lives, I said I wanted what my parents had.

That dream was dead now, and I was about to pour dirt into the grave.

“Ry. Have you told anyone?” Owen stood and stepped in front of me, forcing me to stop in my tracks.

“I told you,” I said, waving my hand up and down his body.