Re: Best Wishes and Feel better Christina:
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:56 am
Get better soon hon! Much love.
Thank you everyone for the well wishes.
Yesterday, 12/4, I went to see a doctor for the follow up from the biopsy they did last week of my right lung. He gave me some good news and some bad. At this point point it still hasn't sunk in yet and seems all surreal. But first, let me tell you what lead up to all of this.
Most of you know I've been dealing with a back injury for over 2 1/2 years now. The pain from it is mostly bearable now with medication, but I still have a lot of days where I can do nothing or get any relief from the pain.
Starting maybe a little over a year ago I began to get a lot of pain in my right shoulder/neck/chest area. I attributed it to heavy use of a cane while trying to walk. The pain would come and go, usually it would hurt for a day or two then I'd have a few weeks pain free. That went on up until about 6 months ago when it became an intense constant pain. I went to see a sports doctor about it and after many xrays he suggested it may be a possible torn rotator cup in my shoulder. By this time I had lost a lot of mobility in my right arm. The sports doctor said he would need an MRI to determine if it was indeed a torn rotator cup. It was about at this time my insurance ran out and I couldn't afford the MRI so that's all the further that treatment went.
This past August my GP strongly suggested I get a chest xray since I still had no relief. The results from the xray were not very clear but did show "something" going on in my right lung. My GP then told me I needed to get a CT scan to get a better picture of what was going on with my lung. Since I had no insurance I had to shop around to get a CT scan I could afford. I finally got a price of $514 for the scan. So several weeks ago I had the scan done and the results were not good. It showed I had a very large mass in my lung that closed part of my bronchial tube and was pushing against my esophagus and heart.
Last week I went into the hospital outpaint clinic for a biopsy. They took a tissue sample on the lung and removed over 1 liter of fluids. The bottom line: I have inoperable lung cancer.
Ok, now for the good news-bad news part. The good news is the fluid they removed was not cancerous. I may have stage 2 or 3 cancer and with extensive treatment has a 70% success rate. The bad news is the tissue is cancerous and may be a stage 4 in which case they would only do minimal treatments to maintain some quality of living.
At this point I still need to have a PET scan done so the doctors know which treatment will work best and if there is any other areas affected. So there still is hope it is a treatable disease although there is little chance that the affected part of the lung will no longer function.
As to what caused this is anyone's guess. Smoking? (I have smoked for years) Enviromental conditions? (my job did take me into many industrial areas) No one can give a definite answer.
So as I get more answers I will let you know. I hope the results from the next round of tests are better then the last.
