X-Ray Day

Since this year is the 5 year anniversary of my diagnosis, I'm starting my annual update a little early and it's going to span the next few weeks instead of just the usual Oct 2 entry. 

I'm sure I'll get into the specifics of this past year at some point, but for now, let's just say that year 5 has been hectic and insane. I know I thought last year had been the worst year thus far, but year 5 really out-did itself. I can honestly say that all the changes this year were for the best and there's even a spectacular change in progress. I can only hope things finally start trending more in the "spectacular" direction....

In any case, I chose today to write because Sept 21 is the 5 year anniversary of the date I actually found out I had cancer. There was still a slight chance it could have been something else, but on September 21, 2009, I found out there was something very wrong. Since I didn't start this blog until later that week, I don't think I've ever shared the story of how my diagnosis came about, but I thought I'd share it now:

In late August of 2009, I was driving home from work one Friday when I reached up to rub my shoulder. As I did so, I noticed a couple hard, pea-sized lumps under the skin. I originally thought they were muscle knots, so I tried knocking them out with heat and massage and then with some visits to a chiropractor. In the meantime, my best friend, who happened to be an ER nurse (she's now an ER nurse practioner....yay!) was over at my house, felt my neck and said she didn't think it felt like muscle knots. She recommended getting them checked by a doctor. Since I'd recently moved to the area, I had to find a new Primary Care doctor, but was able to do so relatively easily. Because of the location of the lumps, we first thought they were thyroid related, so I scheduled a thyroid ultrasound. 

About a week after the thyroid ultrasound, I was waiting at a local Amish market to buy a sticky bun for late breakfast when my phone rang. It was the doctor, letting me know that the ultrasound results were normal, but she wanted to proceed with a CT scan. I asked how she wanted to plan that and she asked if I'd eaten anything that day. I looked at the sticky bun in my hand and told her I hadn't. She asked if I could head to the imaging center right away for a CT. I was slightly alarmed at that point, because you figure, if your doctor asks you to drop everything and get a CT scan immediately, they must be pretty worried, but she sounded calm and like she was just being over cautious. I called work to let my boss know what was going on and headed to the imaging center, but got another call from the doctor on the way, letting me know that my insurance didn't work with the imaging center her office was affiliated with and I also needed pre-approval for the scan. We ended up spending the day on and off the phone trying to get things sorted (I didn't get to eat my sticky bun until about 3pm). By the next afternoon, a Friday (9/18/09), she still hadn't been able to get the pre-approval, so she told me that she wanted me to at least have a chest x-ray. I stopped by her office, got the referral, had the x-rays taken and took the copies back to her office, though she had already left for the day. She'd said she would be in touch on Monday. 

That brings us to September 21st, Monday. Dr. Modi had gotten the pre-approval info for the CT scan and called me, asking me to stop by her office to pick up the referrals. When I got there, she took me into her office and told me she also had the x-ray results she wanted to show me. She got out the actual images I had dropped off on Friday and held them up to the window since she didn't have an x-ray viewer.

(Have fun gasping at that, people who know how to read x-rays)

She said "These are your lungs (indicating the black, lung shaped things), and they look ok. And this is your heart (indicating my heart...in the middle of the image) and it also looks good. But this (pointing to the round-ish mass in the middle of the image, above my heart), shouldn't be here." 

I don't really remember specifically what she said after that. In fact, I don't remember many specifics of the days and months after that, but I remember that morning so clearly. I know she told me that the mass meant that it was most certainly lymphoma, but we wouldn't know what kind until after scheduling a biopsy of the lumps on my neck. I had the CT scan later that day, showing tons of enlarged lymph nodes, in addition to the 8-9cm diameter mass. On the radiologist's report, under impression and after describing the changes to my lungs, the final sentence reads: "THIS IS PROBABLY SECONDARY TO LYMPHOMA."

All I felt then--for weeks--was how surreal it all was. I feel much the same now. How strange it was that I looked so normal on the outside, but inside, my body was a mess. How even today, few people notice my scars unless I point them out. No one expects a 31yr old to have had cancer. But I know it was there and it has profoundly changed everything since that Monday 5 years ago that will forever be seared into my memory.