I promise you that that title isn’t just clickbait. I really did lose 30 pounds in one hour. Chances are, you can’t. And, honestly, I don’t recommend it. Buckle up because it’s story time and this is a long one.

The year was 2019

It was 2019 and I was in the throes of heartbreak. Drowning in a sea of self-pity and self-loathing, I started attending weekly counseling sessions. It was great. From the very first session, I could tell this counselor was exactly what I needed. She was going to give me the skills I needed to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart and glue them back together. And she did.

Between God and counselor, I found myself in a much better place by the end of 2019. I was ready to take on the world. I was ready to try new hairstyles and buy new lipstick and start new hobbies. I was…in need of new pants.

Not only did I gain new tools for handling my emotions, but I also gained new inches around my waist. It was a really hard year. I was dealing with heavy heartbreak and frustrations with my job. I was in my mid-20s. I wasn’t very active in my free time. The weight gain made sense. It wasn’t worth freaking out about. I could start exercising later, when I was mentally in a better place.

The year was 2020

I was so psyched to be starting a new year. I was ready to take on the world. I didn’t need counseling anymore—my counselor and I both agreed. I started downsizing and organizing my bedroom. I started contemplating ways to meet new people and give dating another try.

If this were a movie, this would be the part where the narrator would say something salty like, “She did not, in fact, organize her bedroom.” We all know what happened in 2020. The entire world turned upside down. The carpet got ripped out from under our collective feet. Too many people stood too many brooms up on their bristles and it collided with the Bermuda triangle and some planet in some part of space crossed paths with the exact right other planet and our universe was swallowed up and spit out into the darkest timeline, as predicted by Abed in season 3 of Community. Just kidding. But, there was a global pandemic.

As everyone stayed home, hospitals swelled, and America embarked on the noble quest of solving centuries’ old race relations, I sat in my dining room and worked from home. There’s a lot to unpack from 2020, and I’ll probably get there eventually, but this is the story of how I lost 30 pounds in one hour. That means there had to be 30 pounds to lose. While I worked from my dining room, I continued gaining weight.

I still remember the odd, stretched feeling in my abdomen. I still remember the tightness and the discomfort. The feeling that I could only describe as “there isn’t enough room in my body for my body.” It was like being bloated all the time. It was awful. But, I gave myself grace. This was, after all, my first global pandemic. Of course I was going to eat my feelings. Of course I was going to gain more weight. I was sitting at computers all day and night. I was barely leaving the house. I was overwhelmed and sleep deprived and trying to reconcile my faith and my politics and it was A LOT. I could start exercising later, when the world felt less topsy-turvy.

The year was 2021

In 2021, I started working from work again. It was really nice, but it also brought a new form of discomfort with it. None of my clothing fit. My stomach had grown from “Did she put on a couple pounds?” to “Is she pregnant?” And while I wanted to blame unrealistic beauty standards and poorly designed pants, I really, mainly, mostly blamed myself for letting things get that bad.

Summer came and I was invited to a wedding I ended up attending virtually. But, before I knew I’d miss the wedding, I tried to find a dress for it. I went to every. single. store that I could think of. None of them—NONE OF THEM—had dresses that fit. (Okay so maybe some of them had dresses that technically fit, but they also looked terrible.) There’s nothing like staring at your reflection in dressing room after dressing room to get a really good sense of your body. I was devastated. My weight was out of control. I turned on myself, bullied myself, and felt awful.

How’s the baby?

By September I knew something was wrong with me. I knew I wasn’t just fat—something was medically wrong. By October, I was visiting my doctor and trying to get some answers. The problem with saying “weight gain” to a doctor is that you might be met with “eat better, exercise more.” And while that solution may solve a fair number of issues, it wasn’t what I needed to hear and it wouldn’t have helped my situation.

By November, I had had two different occasions where strangers mistook me for being pregnant. Both situations were actually very thoughtful, despite the damage it did to my psyche. The first was a concerned woman who wanted to make sure I had enough food when the vending machine wasn’t working. The second was a hairdresser looking to celebrate with me while giving me a trim. I didn’t blame them, but their questions stabbed like daggers to my soft, bruised heart. It was brutal.

Have a nice trip, see you next fall

The day before I was scheduled to have an ultrasound, I tripped and fell on my way into work. I scraped my hands. I scraped my knees. I also smashed my mouth against the sidewalk and broke two of my teeth. It, uh, did not feel great.

Shaking and trying not to cry, I went in to the bathroom and cleaned myself up. I thought I could start working for the day, but I also felt weird about it. I called my mom. She told me I needed to leave work and go see the dentist. So, I told my manager what happened. He naturally panicked and got HR. HR, doing what HR people do, told me I needed to go to a nearby urgent care and get checked out for workers’ comp.

In hindsight, I should’ve said no. I should’ve insisted on going home to my dentist. This is the part of the story where I mention my job had moved to a different town, 40+ minutes away, and I had a long daily commute. While going to a local urgent care wouldn’t have been my favorite thing, it would’ve at least been local. This urgent care was foreign to me. I didn’t know anyone or anything in the area outside of my job. And when the HR person dropped me off, it was all I could do to talk myself out of a panic attack.

A panic attack that ended up getting the better of me anyway.

I almost passed out, but thankfully I was surrounded by medical professionals. They helped me and called an ambulance. I had never ridden in an ambulance before. Before the ambulance got there, they asked me if I was pregnant. I was already crying, but I’m pretty sure I cried more after this question.

As soon as the EMTs got there, I told them I wasn’t pregnant, I was just fat. The EMT said it was okay—people asked her if she was pregnant sometimes too. Then, the urgent care nurse said the same thing. I was surrounded by these kind, loving women just trying to help me through this terrifying morning. They were lovely. In fact, before I forget to mention it, it’s important to note that all of the nurses and doctors and hospital staff I would go on to interact with were kind and lovely.

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, though.

Hospital gowns are ugly

I spent the day in the emergency room. My mother came and sat with me. The ER doctor was kind of funny. He spent about two seconds looking at my teeth and told me I needed to see a dentist. Then, almost immediately, he asked about my distended abdomen.

I had already explained to the intake nurses that I wasn’t pregnant and that I was supposed to get an ultrasound the following day. When I told the ER doctor this, he said, “I’m going to give you one right now.” So I shrugged and went along with it. Why not? I was already there.

By this point, I was half dressed in my work clothes and half dressed in a hospital gown. I had heart monitors and probably an IV stuck in me. My mom was next to me, offering moral support and asking questions when I couldn’t think clearly enough to ask them myself. The ultrasound machine was up and running. The little stick doodad was on my tummy. And then the doctor said one of the worst things you can hear in an emergency room.

There’s a mass.

I think the sentence was actually “There’s a mass near your pelvis,” but either way, with those simple words, I was launched into what would be one of the craziest weeks of my life thus far.

They wanted to scan me. They wanted to admit me, but they didn’t have the doctors I needed at that hospital, so they wanted to admit me at a different one even further away. My mom and I asked if I could go somewhere else, somewhere closer. I had never been admitted to a hospital before.

They found a better spot for me. They gave me sedatives. They gave me anti-nausea medication because they couldn’t give me food before the scan. They gave me the scan. They couldn’t tell what the mass was. I don’t remember if they said cancer yet, but it was there, haunting the room. That dirty, disgusting 6-letter word.

I had my second ambulance ride of the day. It was wildly uncomfortable. My oversized stomach bounced and bobbled around. I went in and out of sleep. The dutiful EMT kept trying to ask me intake questions. I just wanted to go home. I just wished I had driven to my dentist. I felt everything and nothing and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and out of body and so painfully aware of my body. It was scary. It was surreal.

I was at the next hospital.

They gave me a different ugly gown and some pants. They said people weren’t technically supposed to stay with patients, but they’d let my mom stay. They’d bring in a chair for her to sleep on.

They wanted to scan me again. I think there were more sedatives. I think there was a new IV.

Someone wheeled my bed down an elevator and through several hallways. I was brought in for the scan. I lied down in front a giant machine and they placed some kind of thick vest on top of me. I couldn’t fit in the machine. I panicked, despite the sedatives, and asked them to stop. I didn’t want to get stuck. They said we’d try again tomorrow. I didn’t understand how one night’s sleep was going to make a difference but hey, fine, whatever. Tomorrow-Andrea could deal with it. Tonight-Andrea could finally get some food.

The rest of it

The next day they told me I was going to have some sort of procedure with a name that’s too long to remember. Once I was there, they handed me a remote and told me to pick a station. I turned on a Hallmark Christmas movie with Jodie Sweeten in it. I don’t know what happened in the movie, but I know it was Jodie because somebody pointed out that she used to be on Full House.

They stuck a needle in my abdomen and started sucking fluid out. It was dark red and terrifying. I thought it was blood. I cried a little.

The fluid kept draining and Jodie probably fell in love on the TV and I kept sitting there, there but not there. I watched the number of ounces go up, and I realized my abdomen was shrinking. I cried again. I was going to fit in my pants again. People weren’t going to keep asking if I was pregnant. I was so relieved. I think I actually cried a couple of times.

12 liters of fluid came out of my body. That’s 3 gallons. That’s 30 pounds. That’s an absurd amount of fluid, even by extreme standards. This was why the scanner operator told me we’d try again. I fit in the machine the second time.

I spent a total of 5 days in that hospital. I was poked and prodded and sedated and scanned and not given very much food because of the scans. I met oncologists who told me that, no offense, they hoped they’d never see me again. I was introduced to a literal panel of doctors who assured me daily that they’d figure out what was going on with me, even if they weren’t sure yet.

It.

Was.

A.

Lot.

And that’s not to mention all the well-wishing from church people and family friends and other friends and that was a lot too, just in a different way. But I finally got to go home, with what felt like a new body, and the entire time I kept thinking, “I hope I don’t have cancer.”

Three weeks later

After like two or three weeks (it’s a blur at this point), I was scheduled to come back for surgery and have the mass removed. It probably wasn’t cancer but it might be cancer and we wouldn’t know until they cut me open and either way I was losing at least an ovary but if it was cancer I’d probably lose everything and if it was bad I’d need chemotherapy and if it’s not cancer and it’s okay it’ll be laparoscopic and if it is cancer it’ll be an up-and-down incision across my belly but they’ll do everything they can to preserve my fertility but it might be cancer prepare for cancer brace yourself for cancer pray that it’s not cancer.

It wasn’t cancer. It was, instead, a really bad cyst.

They didn’t tell me it wasn’t cancer right away. I had somehow been connected with the World’s Most Cautious and Thorough Oncologist, but it was enough not-cancer for me to operate as though it wasn’t cancer.

Post-op was actually kind of fun. Besides the pain and scarring, that is. I got a cute little bear pillow to help with my pain. I got a month off of work, which was a relief because driving all the way out there after my fall felt very scary. I got to have probably the most relaxing Christmas season of my life, after the most insane November of my life, and things were starting to look up.

2022 was wild in it’s own right (more on that here) but this about wraps it up. The story of how I lost 30 pounds in ~roughly~ one hour and did not, praise God, have cancer.

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking it out. Every time I’ve tried to write about this, it’s gone on for what feels like forever. But I really felt like I needed to push through and tell the story so I can stop reliving it a hundred times in expectation of telling it. Trauma echoes for a long time, but the echoes start to dull after a while. Thank you for helping me dull my echoes.