The beginning

The first sign that this (whatever "this" is) was serious was at my first doctor appointment of 2015.

I scheduled an early morning appointment with a different family medicine doctor at Austin Regional Clinic on 1/7/2015.  I didn't really know what to expect when I gave him my list of symptoms.  Guess I haven't enumerated them yet.  They were lump on my chest, neck and head pains on the left side, sharp pain behind rib cage when inhaling deep, shoulder/neck/chest pains when drinking alcohol.  A new lump further left on my clavicle had started to form in the week before this appointment.  I rattled these off to my new doctor and he countered with a list of questions about medical history and other symptoms I might have that I didn't list.  He felt the lumps and sent me to get a blood test and chest x-ray immediately at Austin Radiological Association located 1 floor below ARC.

The chest x-ray was a stat exam so I got in and out of ARA pretty quickly.  It involved me hunching forward into a grid pattern on this machine and the nurse (?) taking the x-rays.  It took all of 2 minutes.  It took me longer to get undressed and put on the hospital gown thing because it was cold that day and that meant big coat and lots of layers.  I hadn't anticipated labs like this, clearly.

I went back upstairs to wait for the results - and they turned out to not say much.  I was sent back down to ARA for a stat CT scan with contrast.  So once again, I had to unbundle myself and change into a hospital gown for this scan.  It was my first time getting an IV in my arm, so that was exciting.  The nurse wiggled the IV needle around in an unused vein in my right arm but that hurt like none other, so she went with a left arm vein.  I lied on a table and was moved in and out of a donut-shaped machine.  She pumped me with the contrast which made my nether regions warm (did I pee myself?) and reran the scan.  The end.  I was then dismissed after a monitoring period (to see if I reacted to the contrast) and told that my doctor and/or his nurse would call me later that day with the results of the CT scan.

So there I am driving back to work 3 hours after my initial appointment time when I get a phone call from the nurse not even 10 minutes after leaving.  She didn't say much about CT scan results but said they had scheduled me for a biopsy consult with Capital Cardiothoracic Group in 6 days.  My mind immediately begins freaking - WHAT!? BIOPSY, WHy?  She said my doctor would call me in an hour to discuss the results but I needed to get a biopsy done ASAP and that was the earliest consult time they could get.

I go to work, sit in my chair for about 5 minutes and go to lunch with Damien.  I had been texting him the entire time I was at the doctor and at the radiology lab.  He's got a feeling that something is terribly wrong.  He's just worried.  I'm naive and keep thinking the doctors just don't know.  After lunch, I get in contact with my doctor and he tells me there is a mass in my chest.  He says it's in my lungs.  They (he and the doctors that looked at my x-ray and scan) don't know if it's benign or malignant; hence, the need for a biopsy.  He's prescribing me codeine for the pain.

So now it's just waiting and waiting for the biopsy consult.  And Googling, of course.  To see what a mass in the chest means.

I'm going to put what happens next (the period of freaking out) in my next post.  It deserves its own post.