I wondered many times if I would ever have the chance to start this thread.
I mostly lurk here as I feel that my comments are unimaginative, pointless, and lacking in intellectual rigor. However, I read the boards daily and am often impressed with the intellectual discourse that I find here. While my contributions are few and far between, a couple years ago I started this thread, wherein I was venting because so many people I knew were receiving cancer diagnosis. As a hospice worker, I had a very hard time with this: I knew what death looked like, had seen it up and close and personal over and over and over and over, and my friends… they were getting sick. Within four months of that thread being posted, three other people, including my brother-in-law, were diagnosed with cancer. I was beginning to feel my sanity slipping.
Also recall this thread, wherein I ask for advice due to something weird going on in my neck. I eventually was referred to a ENT specialist who gave me a diagnosis, 9 months after initial symptoms began. They were anxiety related. (DSeid if you’re reading this, in that thread you nailed it.)
I mention in that thread that I had a CT scan to help diagnose what was going on. The CT scan didn’t see anything in my neck, but it did find something else. The scan basically scanned from eye-level to right below my collar bone. On the scan the radiologist noticed something: a pulmonary nodule, or the dreaded “spot,” on my left lung. My PCP and the radiologist determined that due to my age (I’m 34 now) and lack of exposure to smog and other pollutants it was likely an artifact of a bad lung infection I’d had in 2011 where several rounds of antibiotics, prednisone (both inhaled and in pill form), and copious amounts of cough syrup and tessalon pearls had no effect: for five weeks I had been coughing constantly, my O2 levels were low, and I couldn’t sleep.
I went in for another CT scan early last year, this time looking at my whole chest. There was significant scarring in my lungs from a past infection (believed to be the one in 2011), but the nodule hadn’t grown or changed—which would have been a sign of cancer.
Naturally, I started Googling, and was basically faced with the worst, most dire news (of course). Google was telling me I had about a day to live, too bad so sad. Naturally, this set off the worst, most crushing anxiety I had ever had to deal with. Night after night of dealing with crushing, desperate feeling of impending doom, of feeling that I was about to die. Over and over and over. Panic attacks at work, at home, while driving… it became too much.
In December-January-February of 2013-2014 I became suicidal. I knew, somehow, that I was going to die anyway: Google was telling me I had lung cancer and my days were numbered. Might as well get it over with, I thought. I never actually did anything about those feelings, which is a good thing seeing as I’m still here. My PCP knew about this and put me on Buspar, Effexor, and sent me to a therapist.
In February of 2014 I received a letter from Portland State University, admitting me for Fall 2014. A week later I got word that I had received a full-ride and would not have to worry about tuition, books, or housing costs for the academic year. Naturally, I was ecstatic and my life began to revolve around finishing my then-current community college degree and preparing to move to Portland. My therapist happened to be a graduate of Portland State and on my last day with her she handed me a folded page from a legal pad: it was list of names and offices of therapists she had worked with in Portland and would recommend. I was nearly in tears I was so grateful.
This past Monday I met with my old PCP for a follow-up with the Effexor and the Buspar. While talking with him I brought up the old CT scans and the pulmonary nodules: the fucking things that started this all. He reasoned that 1) it’s been two years next month since the first CT scan, 2) I have a history of lung infections (I was also born prematurely and was on a ventilator for several weeks), and am doing better today—both mentally and physically—than I was two years ago, and 3) CT scans dump a lot of radiation into the body, that there was no reason for me to continue to be scanned. He pulled up the old report, where the radiologist made similar comments. My PCP then confided in me that he had one of these nodules also, and had been through the same process years before: he knew the misery and uncertainty that came with waiting. Concerned with my waistline, he suggested a low-carb diet, lots of exercise, yearly bloodwork, and to see him in six months. He cut my Effexor and Buspar dose a bit and wished me well. He told me to stop worrying about my chest and start worrying about losing weight. He commended me for sticking through school and earning good grades (I was on the honor roll every term I was eligible) while going through a process that would have crushed a lot of people. I went home so choked up I couldn’t talk for an hour or so.
Two years of misery, uncertainty, and fear… gone.
As God is my witness, I don’t know how to feel. I feel like I’ve been given a new lease on life. I don’t know what the future holds, obviously nobody does. But here I am, ¾ of the way through a college degree that I began when I was 29 and I’m feeling great. I went through a period of utter misery and came out on top. I’ve been given a chance to live, to become a better person, to finally do something for others.
I suspect I’ll be alive tomorrow. Which is something I haven’t felt confidently in a long time.
And neither should you. If it’s important enough to you to talk about here, it’s a sure bet there is someone else to whom it’s important enough to read.