March 18, 2014 I went to the Emergency Room with an ear ache I could not get resolved with antibiotics. They put me on stronger antibiotics. Suddenly, I am having severe breathing issues. I cannot swallow food without choking. I thought perhaps it was an allergic reaction to the new never had before antibiotic. The ER told me I had bronchitis. I go to my doctors office for a refill on my nebulizer medications to see if I can get some relief for extreme breathing issues and she has me stay in office to be seen because the receptionist did not like how I sounded attempting to breathe. Doc see's me, sends me for an ultrasound of my neck and BAM! they found a "mass."
The very next day I am back in the ER because breathing is becoming impossible and nebulizer treatments are NOT doing a thing for me. A Ear, Nose, Throat doctor comes in to see me and tells me he "thinks" I have Lymphoma. He does a needle biopsy and a scope and the waiting begins for the ever so elusive answers!! Despite the needle biopsy not being the best method to diagnose cancer he wanted to to it anyway because of the new never knew i had complication of 1/2 of my voice box is paraylized. So he does it and it did not give him answers he needed so 5 days later I am in the hospital again for a surgical biopsy despite the dangers of the voice box issue.
The doctors tell me they cannot start ANY treatments until they get all the biopsy reports back 7-10 days. They discharge me from hospital only to call me back in the very next day to say they are imeadiately starting radiation therapy....Wait...What??? You just told me you can't do anything until test results come back in 7-10 days??? I may need chemo, you were going to start that first then do radiation?? Nothing seems to be making any sense to me. Answers are elusive at best. First they tell me it's Thyroid Cancer, then they say no it's Lymphoma IN MY THYROID and NOT Thyroid Cancer...and somehow there's a difference there??
Twenty-three days later I am still trying to get an answer to what is exactly going on with me. Today I go for my third radiation treatment they did not even think I needed yet because they do not know what they are fighting or the best way to go about it yet...but I am doing it anyway...blindly, nervously, and hating every minute of it. Pathology is "supposed" to be back today, "supposedly" I should have an answer, a direction, a something...
I am just trying to seek some sanity in all of this. The unknown, missing, elusive, answers are a cruel mind scramble that zaps away any illusion of sanity you could have ever been vain enough to believe that you had in the first place. Certainly, I cannot be alone in this answer-less jungle of the newly-diagnosed insanitarium?!
