So, I was a bit surprised when I found a voice mail on my phone a couple days later saying the doctor wanted to talk to me about my test results. Usually they just nag me about the cholesterol and all the rest is good. Well it was about quarter to five on a Friday when I called them back. The nurse put the doc on the line and she told me that the chest ray showed a mass in the hilar region of my right lung.
Yeah.
That's what I thought.
She said I needed to follow up with my personal doc and that they recommend a CT scan asap. Hmm...ya think?
Of course it is now five oclock on a Friday and I cant do anything about it. I emailed my doc just to get a jumpstart on the process and he actually responded on Sunday with an email that said he already scheduled me a CT on Tuesday. Right on. Way to go.
Went for the CT. Also quick and easy and painless. And then the waiting began.
I had just picked up my kids from school the next day and was driving away when my phone rang. I saw it was Kaiser and pulled into a parking lot, gave the kids the shush signal, and answered the phone. The news was not fun. He told me the scan confirmed a 3" mass in my chest. Not in my lungs fortunately but in the mediastinum.
He said I needed a biopsy (again asap) and that he had made the referral and they would contact me hopefully by weeks end. If they didn't call by Monday I was supposed to call him back. I adjusted that to Friday. No way was I waiting through the weekend.
Fortunately they called on Friday (late on Friday) and had me scheduled for the following Friday. It took an interminable five days to get the results late Wednesday afternoon. The good news was it did not appear to be cancerous, won't know for sure until it is analyzed after removal.
Which brings us to removal:
I need a thymectomy (the tumor grew out of the thymus) which could be minimally invasive but has a whole host of potential complications that can't be seen until they are in the midst of the procedure.
For example if the tumor has adhered to anything like my lung or pericardium or phrenic nerve they mav have to remove a small section of whatever it adhered to. In the case of the phrenic nerve that would mean permanently paralyzing the right side of my diaphragm. I was assured this was okay because the left side will still work just fine. Also the tumor is large and has to come out intact which means having a big enough hole to take it out of. This means possibly rib spreaders or taking a piece of rib out or worst of all a sternotomy (splitting my sternum and wiring it back together after). Really hoping it doesn't go that route.
So stay tuned folks. Same tumor time. Same tumor channel.
