Something on my scan…
I saw the radiologist yesterday and she starts with “so I saw the results of your PET/CT…” and I stopped her and asked “Am I going to faint? Do I need my husband in here? Are you going to tell me something bad?” She stopped and wondered. That’s when I got dizzy. It turns out, there is something suspicious on my scan…but it’s nothing she says. It’s not cancer and it’s not a tumor, she just wanted to tell me about it, in case I got the report, because it sounds like something on the report. “We’ve looked at it, but to be safe, we’re having the folks at the Parnansus campus look at it, too. We’ll know more tomorrow.” So—what it is, is some strange area in my esophagus that lit up on the scan. That means it took up the radioactive glucose, and it showed up on the scan as some diffuse area of interest…I guess. According to her, it’s not cancer, and according to her resident, that’s not an area of metastasis (pick your words better, junior.) So—they saw the other lump in my other breast, and suggested a biopsy, not realizing that I had one last year and it showed to just be an adenoma of some sort, and according to my radiologist, there was nothing on my liver—that 5 mm “something” which almost scared me half to death because they couldn’t say with any certainty WHAT it was, turned out to go away. Of course, in my mind, it was cancer, and it went away because of the chemo…but of course, it really was probably nothing—damage from attending an Ivy League drinking? We didn’t drink THAT much…I guess it was just a fat lobule, or something. But this esophageal thing…my grandfather died of esophageal cancer (he was a smoker, back in the industrial age, when they didn’t know about cigarettes or even filters) so I asked her if Parnassus doesn’t have any conclusion, would I have to be scoped? As an ICU nurse, I’ve assisted on many scopes…it’s terrible—people fight even though they’re sedated…no one wants something crammed down their esophagus…the gagging, the tears…and that’s just me, the patient goes through much worse. Just kidding…I have a macabre sense of humor. But, anyway…I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit worried. I’m worried that my life goes like this—you make plans and then BLAM! broadsided by some shitty news. I am making plans to return to work, return to school…it’s about par for the course to hear a BLAM soon. We’ll see what they say today when I go in for my 13th radiation treatment. Try not to dwell on it being lucky 13. I’m dwelling enough for the both of us.
