How this new round started: I guess it is ok to publicly say that I work for IBM (though all tweets & every other thought is my own!). I travel. I travel a lot... sometimes every week. So this past summer, I was in Austin, Texas for meetings and was awaken with the sharpest imaginable pain. I thought I was possibly having an appendicitis attack - it was that bad. I was in a hotel, in a new city and almost called 911. But I didn't. I made it home.
When I arrived home the next day, the pain didn't really go away. Because I am the healthiest stage IV cancer patient ever, I do not have a PCP (primary care physician for you amateurs! :) ) I called the local urgent care who told me they did not have MRI/CT capability, only x-ray so I should consider going to the hospital emergency room. Instead, I called my then (not now; blog for another day on "how to choose your best medical team") oncologist. He was able to get my scheduled for a CT scan right away.
Good news! My appendix looked great! However, the abdomen/pelvic CT goes up high enough to get a "free peek" at the lower lungs. Bad news! There were 3 identifiable nodules that looked like metastatic recurrence of my prior breast cancer.
And so it begins....... Again............
The next week was a PET scan which is able to view the entire body. The 3 nodules now appear to be 7, maybe 8. Nodules, by definition, are smaller than tumors; less than 1 cm. But still, 7 or 8 of them (in both lungs, by the way), is not very reassuring.
We had to go through the difficult conversations of telling friends and family that we have to fight this....... Again..........
But the real good news?? Since that day, my so-called appendix has been pain free. I mean completely. pain. free. What caused the pain that took me into the doctor that saw the "free peek" that, blah, blah, de blah...?? Why yes, I do believe that it was fate, and that God played a part in creating a pain so severe that I got off my slack butt and had a scan that I was 9+ months overdue for. If prayer can get me re-diagnosed at the right time, prayer can heal me and inspire my doctors on the right course of treatment. Yes, I fully believe that.
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