I met with one of the junior oncologists today, Travis, we have crossed paths many times before in my treatment and he's a really like-able guy.
He did the all the standard tests on me. Listened to my chest, my heart and my breathing. He checked me over thoroughly for swollen lymph nodes, found none. I do this every day in the shower, been doing it for over four years now, so I knew he wouldn't find any new surprises.
I ran through my story of a cough that started on April 10th and how I had passed my concerns onto Dr D'Souza a few weeks later. I gave him the timeline between the last CT scan and where I was now. I guess if there's one thing that stands out is that the cough is no worse for the passage of time, however the constant fever is a fly in the ointment.
I told him that I had a theory (yeah another one!!) and that was that the "inflammation" which had shown on previous scans as well as the latest one, could well show lung involvement that was resistant to treatment and was "reseeding" (my words) my lymphoma time and time again. I did mention that this was my worst case scenario.
I thought we should get a CT scan done as soon as possible and that way we could see if there were new areas of involvement. This would prove Hodgkins. If the CT shows no increase then we are back with any number of possibilities. Travis said he would prefer to do a Bronchoscopy first. To rule out infections etc. I said it would all take too long and that I couldn't put a price on removing the uncertainty from my life. It's been like living under a lead blanket for the last month for both Sarah and myself.
I asked that he give me a script for a CT scan at Pacific Radiology and I'd pay for it myself if I had to, just to get things moving faster. Well what a difference going private makes! By 2:45pm this afternoon I had had my CT scan and by tomorrow afternoon the doctors will have the results. In the meantime, not wanting to be outdone, the surgery team at Wgtn hospital have asked that I arrive at 7:30am on thursday for the bronchoscopy procedure. I also called my health insurer and they said they would pay for the scan.
The net result is that I will know where I stand by either Wednesday (if they cancel the bronchoscopy, because the CT shows it's cancer) or mid next week when the cultures come back if they have grown some sort of nasty. Wouldn't that be a fantastic bit of news... "I'm sorry Mr Scanlan but you have Legionnaires disease" and I jump up kiss the doctor and do a victory dance.
I live in hope.
My weight has dropped to just under 70kg. It's all my fault too. I knew I was running a fever and I needed to eat more to compensate for the furnace I have blazing away. Add to that the hard physical work I've been doing since my mechanic left last month, plus I'd been skipping lunch most days because I didn't want to shut up shop just to grab a bite to eat. Instead I ate the odd banana or a yogurt. Simply not enough energy going in to stop me loosing weight.
I've stopped that now. I'm eating three meals a day plus two meal replacement drinks and loading up on whatever I can between meals too. My goal is to get to 75kg in a month.
Oh and I gave up on trying to double the dose of my steroid inhaler, any more than the std two puffs at a time and I instantly get a horrible gagging, choking cough that makes me throw up. I learnt after the second attempt that it wasn't a happening thing! Two puffs twice a day is fine.
Regardless of what the outcome of my tests are I am still closing down my business and selling off most of my assets and toys. Just looking at where I am right now physically I would say that it could be a year before I'd be well enough to do physical work again, and that's assuming I don't have cancer. If I've got the dreaded C back then work will be the last thing on my mind.
My Evo race car is now on display at Motorsport NZ's head office where it will stay for some time. After that it may go into storage or be put on display at a friends workshop/showroom.
I've been absolutely inundated with offers of help and support, so much so that I've been blown away. Take my Toyota AE86 race car which is in pieces at the moment. An engineering acquaintance of mine has asked if he and his son could come in during the week and put the car together for me as a way of him spending time with his son, showing him about cars and helping me out at the same time. This is just one of dozens of such offers I have had from both close and distant friends over the last week.
Anyway roll on the test results!! I'll post about the bronchoscopy on Thursday.
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