Dr appts galore

For someone who isn't really a fan of going to the doctor, these few weeks have been a test of my patience. Part of that is my own fault, I put off the annual gyn exam and postponed the mammogram.  Now that I'm motivated to finally move forward with the ds surgery, I realized that I needed to get those things out of the way too. Fortunately, I was able to get scheduled for those this week.

Next week I have some kind of dr appt every day, including my first visit with Dr. G, seeing my primary care doctor so she can get on board with everything, and getting a clearance from the pulmonologist.

I got a call yesterday from a nurse at Dr. G's office who asked me cautiously if I had gotten a phone call from my primary care about my chest xray results. After a moment of confusion, I realized what she was talking about. I have a mediastinal mass and some lung nodules discovered while having a routine chest xray 8 years ago. After many chest CTs, two separate, fairly invasive surgeries to biopsy it, I have never had a formal diagnosis other than an opinion from one specialist that it was definitely some type of infectious process that I had previously been sick with. They theorized that my body just walled the infection off.  For the last 6 years or so, I have an annual chest CT to check on it and it's still always there, pretty much unchanged. Anyhow, the nurse said that Dr. G would want to get surgery clearance from a pulmonologist, so I set up an appt with the Abington pulmonary group I saw previously, albeit not since 2004.

I had given this previous medical history to their office, as well as mentioning it to the technician taking the xray, because I didn't want anyone to freak out when they saw a egg sized mass on the xray, but perhaps that info wasn't on the chart. I think the nurse was pretty relieved when I explained to her that this wasn't news to me! It made me remember when I first got the phone call about it, so many years ago. The radiologist report said that it was highly suggestive of lung cancer so it was a pretty traumatic time in my life.  I am still so grateful that it didn't turn out to be the case.