I knew something was wrong.

It all started in February of 2008 with some weird gurgling in my belly, followed by a bit of weight gain and bloating. I had just spent Christmas and New Year's in Mexico and thought maybe I had eaten something bad or accidentally drank the water. I was kicking myself for asking for a glass of ice one morning.

Thinking I was suffering digestion issues from a week of partying hard, I made an appointment to see a gastroenterologist. That one appointment turned into many. The bloating continued to worsen and, at one point, I looked several months pregnant. My co-workers and neighbors, excited about my impending motherhood, asked about my due date and guessed at the sex of my baby. Looking back, I wish that had been the case.

Over the following months, I underwent a series of tests before an ultrasound finally revealed what was happening inside my body.

"You have two large tumors on your ovaries," my gastro doc said. "One is the size of a softball."

Now, I had been diligent about making my yearly doctor's visits and had seen my gyn several months before.

When she saw the results of my ultrasound, she thought a cyst she'd found on my right ovary a few years prior had simply grown into a mass that needed to be removed. The process would involve a minimally invasive surgery, she told me, which we could schedule when she returned from vacation in a week. "Your chances of having ovarian cancer are low," she told me reassuringly.

If you go by the statistics, she was right.