Room 695

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On July 15th 2025, I went to the emergency room for abdominal pain and rapid weight gain. Unbeknownst to me, I was toting around an 18 cm cancerous immature teratoma that had engulfed my right ovary. Along with the teratoma, I was also carrying 50 lbs of abnormal abdominal fluid, or massive gross ascites, gross indeed. After a blood draw that showed critically low sodium and a CT scan revealing my ovarian mass causing the low sodium, I was admitted to the ICU at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where I knew my life would change forever.

“There is a chance of malignancy, but we will know more after your surgery” were the words swirling around me from the kind doctors in the days I spent hooked up to monitors. I was unable to move around my room without assistance and whenever a wire would come undone an alarm would sound. I think back to those days, existing in that cold, liminal space before the cancer was confirmed where time seemed to crystallize. I refreshed my MyChart obsessively and Googled everything about this type of ovarian cancer. I found out that many Immature teratomas are filled with hair and teeth which is horrifying but kind of fascinating. I reverted to a nearly primal state of survival: just me, the anxious thoughts spinning in my head, and the monster living on my ovary, surrendering as one to whatever fate lay ahead for us.

Sleep did not find me most nights in the ICU. I’m sure the hundreds of pictures of teratomas I would see when I closed my eyes didn’t help my insomnia but I also had blood draws to monitor my sodium every two hours, pee tests, and vital checks. One night, I woke up at 1:00 AM to a technician performing an ultrasound on my abdomen. I asked, “Is it rude if I keep sleeping?” and continued to float in and out of delirium during this moon-guided procedure. I had to ask my nurse if this was really happening, since the whole experience felt like a fever dream. I realized then that I had a more bustling nightlife in this hospital room than I did in my actual life.

In the mornings, lemony sunbeams would seep through the cracks in my window blinds. Daytime was bursting with energy inside and out, but I asked if I could keep them shut. I didn’t want any additional reminders of the fact that the world was still moving forward. Boston was having a heatwave and whenever a friend or my partner would visit and complain about the heat I would feel a little smug sitting in my icy room, cuddled under my blankets from home.This feeling would be short-lived, as I would ask about their lives and my feelings of jealousy would creep in. I would hear about work, weekend plans, concerts, and cute things my cat was doing at home. I wanted to feel the humid New England summer on my face. I wanted something more to contribute to the conversations than my growing fear and my new quirky anecdotes about my procedures. When asked how I was doing, I would share, “I had 8 liters of fluid drained from my abdomen that kind of looked like a Hi-C Ecto Cooler from the ’90s,” or I would gripe about the journey of having to shit in a commode because there are no patient bathrooms on the ICU floor.

In total, I spent about a week in the ICU and another few days in the hospital after surgery in a standard patient room. Time both crawled and sprinted, and I would often forget that the life I lived outside of the hospital walls that was currently on pause. Yet, I do look back on this time with a twinge of nostalgia— everything was in motion, and there was a clear-cut plan. After I left the hospital, I jumped into a pool of uncertainty. The uncertainty if I would need chemotherapy, after starting chemotherapy the unpredictability of what symptoms I would experience once chemo started. The unclear timeline of when my hair would fall out (three weeks into treatment, by the way). And as I write this now, I’m in the uneasy state between having had a CT scan for surveillance and waiting for the results. Not knowing if I’ll end up back in an icy cold room where the world fell away and it was just me, my fear, and my cancer.