Some things women should know about uterine cancer.
It was only a few weeks since the unexpected death of my 18-year-old son, Will, from suicide. I was still in excruciating pain from this loss. The weekend ahead held his birthday and Easter, the first major holiday since he died. We attended a family gathering, and I remembered how Will loved his cousins. I ached that he was not there to see them.
As we drove back home, an acute, overwhelming wave of grief swept over me, and I sobbed. I was getting over a cold and had a cough. The sobbing just exacerbated the cough. I sobbed, coughed, sobbed again, and felt miserable.
That evening I noticed just a small amount of bleeding. I almost ignored it, thinking that the sobbing and crying earlier in the day could have caused increased pressure in my abdomen that led to some minor bleeding from the uterus. Still, it was alarming to me since I had gone through menopause several years before and had not bled since then.
I called my gynecologist the next day, Monday, and had an appointment to see her the following day. I knew my doctor well. Her son had gone to school with my son, so she was very empathetic.
The doctor confirmed that blood was coming from my uterus. She explained that...
