Black Collegian News & Views

The following is part one of a three part series on Viebica’s battle with ovarian cancer.

The summer of 1999 is and forever will be etched in my brain.  Like the scorching that used to linger after my mama had grazed my neck with a hot comb, it lingers still. This scar just as permanent as one of those new “birthmarks” the hot comb left on my skin.

The summer was not significant because I spent it, in its entirety, in New Orleans, away from my family; I had done that before.  It was not significant because I interned at the Times Picayune; I'd had internships before.  It wasn't even significant because my boyfriend and I were having “issues”; Aren’t we always?  Last summer eclipses all other times in my life because it was the setting for the beginning of the most frightening, most important and most metamorphic experience I had ever faced in 22 years on this earth- ovarian cancer.

"Impressively large" was the words the ER doctor used to describe the tumor that had been making me so sick that I could barely eat for the last month or so of the summer.

It was August, and I had just returned to Xavier for registration after visiting my family in Atlanta.  Despite some exhaustion from the long, hot and humid New Orleans summer and having felt under the weather for most of that summer, I returned to school with newfound zeal and energy for the beginning of the fall semester of my last year at XU.

I had seen a doctor in Atlanta the week before, about the abdominal pain I was having the constant fever and the incessant nausea that had been plaguing me for weeks.  They diagnosed the problem as a bladder infection and sent me back to New Orleans on antibiotics.

After having finished the antibiotics to no avail, I went to Mercy Baptist's ER.  They ordered an outpatient ultrasound for the following morning.  I returned to the hospital and had the ultrasound.  The moans and gasps escaping from the technician performing the ultrasound alarmed me enough so that I knew something was very wrong.

But cancer never crossed my mind. Why should it?  I was only 22 and that’s too young for cancer.  Of course it's too young.  But something inside me knew, the same way some people recognize death's presence and make peace with their families before dying for no apparent reason.

The night after the ultrasound, I mustered up the strength to go show my face at a close friend’s surprise birthday party.  Then I drove back to my apartment and calmly packed a bag with all the essentials: deodorant, lotion, toothbrush, underwear and nightgowns.

I meticulously brushed my hair back into a ponytail, as something inside of me knew that there would be days when I wouldn't be able to maintain the cute little coif I sported to the party that night.  I had no clue what was happening.  But something still but quaking, something quiet but ever so loud, something at the core of who I am perhaps even something divine knew that my mind, my body and my spirit were about to face guerilla warfare.  Something knew that this would be a very formidable foe and would not fall with one blow.  Something inside knew that I had to return to Mercy (hospital) and that this time I wouldn't walk away as I had before and that I would be forever changed.

For the next two weeks, I spent every waking hour being poked and prodded with every testing apparatus using every testing method imaginable, They knew the tumor was there, in my abdomen, but they didn't know exactly where nor did they know whether it was benign or malignant.  I was nauseated all the time even though I spent almost the entirety of those two weeks NPO, which is hospital language for nothing by mouth.  And I mean nothing.

After a week or so, the emotional wreckage that was my mother at the time arrived in town with my sister and nephew.  The day they arrived, my surgery was performed.  Up until the time they rolled me into pre-op, the only thing I had been told was that they would perform an exploratory laparotomy, meaning they would go in not knowing exactly where the thing was, but they would 'explore' until they found it and removed it.  Because the x-rays had revealed that the mass was so huge, bigger than my head, they said they anticipated no problem finding it.  This would be a normal procedure, they said.  

They waited until just before the anesthesia to drop the real bomb, presenting papers to me to sign that gave them permission to remove whatever they needed, specifically my reproductive organs, to get the cancer out, if it turned out to be cancer.  I felt the weight of the Huey P. Long Bridge come crashing down on me, huge chunks of pavement and metal wailing on me over and over.  My head throbbed and I felt dizzy all at once as I sobbed uncontrollably.  Shaking and trying to make out all the words in the paper, I could barely see through my tears, but I could not help but notice the sobbing of the nurse empathizing with the merciless beating my heart was suffering at that moment.  Seeing the gynecologist cloud up and hold his head down only made me cry harder.  I didn't know whether to cry more or scream and be mad as hell, but whom would I be mad at?  Myself?  What had I done?  The doctor?  Wasn't he trying to help me?  My mom?  Didn't this have something to do with genetics?  Technology?  Had computers and microwaves, pollution and processed food done this to me?  Or should I be mad at God?  After all, he's the impetus for everything, Right?

Who could I blame?  Whose fault was it that I was being forced to sign my ovaries and uterus away just so I could live to see my 23^rd birthday?  Who could I hurt to show them the hurt I felt to sign my babies away?  Who had stolen my legacy?  Where was the man, woman or it who would deny me a thing so essential to womanhood?

The “it” had been growing inside me for God knows how long.  No wonder I had felt so bad all summer.  And this was just the beginning.

Viebica Stokley is a student at Xavier University in Louisiana.  Prior to learning that she has cancer, she was editor of the Xavier Herald’s living page.  She plans to resume her editorial duties next school year.