NOTE : apologies for those reading just for the weight updates … the endometrial cancer diagnosis of May 25th has sent my life into a tailspin and it’s not been possible for me to separate out the weight and these other issues.  That’s true on a daily basis, and it’s true again in today’s post.

Ok, since for the third day in a row my weight has shown up as 199 I’m making it offical and moving my ticker, Hello again Onederland.  Goodbye forever 200+ land.

I’m not putting my next big milestone on my ticker yet (to get back to the weight of my wedding 2 years ago, which was also my previous stable weight).  I want to celebrate the accomplishment of coming this far, and I want to keep the scale stable (or slightly moving down) over the next 3 weeks in California. I’ll be happy to come home from our trip weighing in at 19x.  199 will be just as acceptable as something lower, let’s keep the expectations realistic.

I also saw my gyn oncologist today and talked with him about the other experts opinions and what my fertility guy had said on Tuesday.  He reiterated that from a cancer standpoint I’m not facing a lot of worry (in that it’s quite manageable and all the tests have come back looking encouraging) but also said that he understood the desire for a pregnancy and the time lag that the hormonal treatment would involve (my fertility doc felt the additional 9 month delay was not a good idea).

So we agreed to move forward with a ’simple’ hysterectomy, meaning removal of the uterus, but leaving the ovaries.  I’d be able to do egg collection via IVF 8 weeks after the surgery, and the surgery is scheduled for September 1st.  He also said he didn’t want to do the hormone treatment for the next month, said the risk is very minimal and that it’s better from a cancer staging perspective to not have the hormone treatment.  That made sense to me and avoided the need for the IUD placement, so I agreed.

I feel like it’s a good decision, and one I can be at peace with.  In the meantime my husband has come around this past week to the idea of a gestational carrier with our embryos.  This option doesn’t pose moral dilemmas to him, and that is ALL HIM coming to terms with it, not me leading him here, as I’ve purposefully given him lots of space on this.

I’m even ready to face the facts more, and will call the US fertility doctor today, and also start seriously researching finding our gestational carrier (surrogate).  One of my sisters has offered to be our surrogate, but she just announced her third (and final) pregnancy, and by the time she’d be ready it’s out of the time window that we need.  So we’ll be in the more-expensive (but less emotionally complex) situation of hiring a surrogate, which apparently can take a long time.   Working all this out will no doubt keep me busy and occupied for quite a while.  But it feels hopeful and smart and life-affirming, all while having the safest options for my health.

Without the progestin treatment for the coming weeks, I have no excuse to gain weight, which is good and will keep me on track for our trip.