Bronchoscopy Fun
This morning I had a bronchoscopy (a scope in my airway with a needle attached) to follow up on a suspicious-looking node near my lungs that popped up on my PET scan. I had a nasty cough at the time, so my oncologist was hopeful that was the cause. If the biopsy were to come back positive for cancer, it would technically put me at Stage 4, although my doctors would still attempt to treat with either open-chest surgery or radiation. I was told the results would take 5-7 days because this isn't terrifying at all and waiting is so much fun!
Here I am with a forced smile -- I'm hungry and thirsty and coffee-deprived. While waiting for surgery, they parked me in front of the biohazard scope wash, where I got to watch medical personnel sanitizing eerily long black scopes. It was not the most relaxing way to kick off surgery.
When I woke up in recovery, I was told that the pulmonologist hadn't seen anything worrying and didn't even need to take any samples. So yay! Good news for once. Tonight I'll be celebrating my stage 3 cancer status with take-out and TV.
Here I am with a forced smile -- I'm hungry and thirsty and coffee-deprived. While waiting for surgery, they parked me in front of the biohazard scope wash, where I got to watch medical personnel sanitizing eerily long black scopes. It was not the most relaxing way to kick off surgery.
When I woke up in recovery, I was told that the pulmonologist hadn't seen anything worrying and didn't even need to take any samples. So yay! Good news for once. Tonight I'll be celebrating my stage 3 cancer status with take-out and TV.
That's wonderfull, Jami. Excuse me while I cheer. (YAY!!) I thought that new red/brown wig suited you quite well, by the way. Ian and Val finally made it home today. Think I'll pop up and spread the cheer.
ReplyDeleteMLM
OMG!!! I am so happy!!! Great news!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'll spread a little gloom. While it was probably just her bad chest cold that was pissing off the lymph node at the time of the PET scan, I have this lingering, nagging fear that the chemo was just super-effective really fast, and so there is still cancer in there, just reduced in size enough that it was able to hide from the scope. No biopsy, so no way to be sure. Ideally you scope everything before chemo, but this doctor wasn't easy to schedule, and so we're 3 weeks in to chemo before he was able to look. I'll ask the oncologist next week how crazy a fear this is. I'm hoping she'll say that's made-up medicine and I should stop glooming.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I said. But surely these doctors know what they're doing. Gloom be gone!
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