This is a medical question, but I’m not asking for a diagnosis, just reassurance.
My sister, who is in her early sixties, went to the doctor yesterday for pain in her shoulder. They did an x-ray, and became concerned when they saw nodules in her lungs. Now she’s in the hospital and they’re doing a CAT scan tomorrow to get a better look at what’s going on.
My mom is badly shaken. She’s convinced it’s cancer. I’m worried too, but after googling “lung nodules” I discovered that most nodules are benign. Furthermore, my sister has suffered from serious asthma since she was a little girl. Anything that got her overexcited could trigger a serious bout of wheezing. She’s always carried an inhaler with her in case she gets an attack, and she lived most of her adult life in Colorado because the dry air was easier on her. Needless to say, she never smoked.
It occurs to me that given her long history of asthma, it would odd if she DIDN’T have some scarring on her lungs. And so, while it’s prudent for the doctors to do a full battery of tests to make sure that what they saw on the x-rays isn’t cancer, I shouldn’t lie awake tonight worrying myself sick that my sister only has a few months to live.
I don’t have an answer, but I’d be interested to hear what other Dopers have to say. I feel like my chest is going to explode most of the time and nothing really helps.
I am sure that, given her age and history, the doctors would have let her know if she should be alarmed. If she had asthma, it’s possible she could have a lot of scarring. I know I’m always prone to respiratory infections and such.
Possible causes: Churg-Strauss, Wegeners, Sarcoid, fungal infections, tuberculosis, and a few other infectious-style zebras.
Cancer would be low down on my list, but definitely needs to be excluded. Metastases from a primary colon cancer can present like this.
Most likely diagnosis? My shoot-from-the-hip WAG would be they’re jut left over from some old, resolved infectious or inflammatory process she got over years ago. But the bad stuff still needs to be excluded.
Thanks very much. That’s what I guessed from reading stuff online.
She and her doctors seem to be taking it seriously and running a full battery of tests. The thing is, my dad died of a fast acting cancer two years ago, and when my mom called me with the news that my sister was in the hospital being tested, she was very pessimistic. But I suspected that her extreme pessimism at this stage in the diagnostic process was unwarranted, and I was hoping that someone with more medical knowledge than I could confirm my suspicions.
As Qadgop said, there are many, many causes of lung nodules running the gamut from incidental and benign to serious and lethal.
Your sister has asthma. I suppose, then, she’s had chest X-rays before this. It would be very helpful to know if the nodules were present and seen on earlier x-rays (in which case, obviously, there’s less concern).
Depending on the CAT scan results, a biopsy may be ordered. That is quite easily and safely done nowadays often using the CAT scan itself to guide the needle to the “best” site for biopsy.
Hope this all turns out to be a tempest in a teapot.
The likelihood of having incidental pulmonary nodules or enlarged lymph nodes seen on chest x-ray or CT scan also can be related to where you live. In my part of the world (Ohio Valley) it is very common for people to have asymptomatic histoplasmosis (fungal infection) and develop granulomatous foci which scar down and remain for years, to be picked up on imaging studies and worry patients and doctors.
As a pathologist I see a lot of biopsies of these nodules that turn out to be benign. Occasionally unsuspected malignancy is discovered this way, but it’s pretty unusual in the absence of a known history of cancer.
I’d be worried too, but hopefully this is a false alarm.
