A couple more updates to report. Saw my primary care. She was very pleased that I had lost 7 lbs while in CA. I'm trying to keep that going, I would love to have lost 15 lbs or more before the surgery.
Also had my psych consult. I was kind of worried about it beforehand. Turns out I had nothing to fear. She asked me a lot of questions like 'Do you think you overeat?' (yes) 'Do you think you have problems with portion control' (yes). And lots of other questions about what/when I eat stuff. Also questions about depression/suicidal thoughts, etc. At the end, she said that she thought I would do well with the surgery and wished me luck. It was about 20-25 minutes altogether so not bad at all.
Today I went back to the pulmonary specialist. I went through a series of breathing tests with the respiratory tech, then saw the NP. She went over the results of both the breathing tests and the sleep study. It turns out I do have sleep apnea but it was mild. She said they would only treat it if I had other issues such as cardiac problems or if I have upcoming surgery. Since of course I am anticipating upcoming surgery, she looked specifically at the results where I was lying on my back, and said that those looked fine and I wouldn't need pre-surgical treatment. Yay for that.
Then we talked about the results of my chest CT from back in June. The larger mass is still stable, but the smaller mass in my right upper lobe has increased in size. Looking back at the two prior CT's (in 2008 and 2010) the mass has increased at each study. The pulmonologist is out of the office until Monday but she is going to review the results with him and see what he wants to do. She thinks he'll want another biopsy though. I explained that they had tried to biopsy this smaller mass via bronchoscopy when I had the mediastinotomy for the big mass biopsy, but they couldn't visualize it, and she told me that there have been new techniques developed for bronchoscopy in the intervening years. So perhaps they would be successful now. Still, I'm pretty upset about the thought of a potential delay in getting clearance for surgery. About the lung mass itself, I'm actually not that worried. It's been there at least 9 years that I know of, so the chance of it being something malignant is pretty remote, that's not the nature of cancer, to be so slow growing.
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