the Waiting Place

And now for the latest in the never ending story that is the death of my lung.

Yesterday was the day for my second biopsy, where they were to use the CT to guide a needle into my chest and lung and extract the necessary material from the mass in order to ascertain what it is.

Got to the hospital at 8a.m. for prep. Ended up having to argue with them about which lung it was (they thought my right upper lung instead of the right upper quadrant of my left lung). This slowed everything down as they had lost my old films and didn't believe me (and the pulmonologist's shorthand was difficult for them). Finally, everything was squared away and they were ready to prep me for the biopsy on the correct lung.

So, I'm finally taken to radiology at 11:30 for the CT and it's news to them that they don't have my films, and they too want to do the wrong lung... so we wait for them to order copies of my films and once they have them, sure enough, I was still right about it being the left lung (as if I even need films to know which one of my lungs is not performing. I can fucking feel it every breath).

As I then wait while the surgeon goes over my films, I can hear him in the other room talking about my surgical needs, and then he came out to talk them over with me. To be quite frank, he felt there was only a 50/50 chance of getting a viable biopsy from the mass through this procedure because of the dangerous proximity to major blood vessels, and that the risk was too high when it was already obvious that I would need the surgery to remove the dead portion of my lung, which would take the mass with it anyway (and then they'd have the whole thing to test). The dead quadrant of my lung isn't going to heal and needs to go. He preached to me about how I should be happy (but at the same time, I should make sure everything is in order to my satisfaction). I should walk out of there clicking my heels together with glee (really his words) because at my age it should go very easy and should be a walk in the park. He also pointed out that the man in there before me was a 70 year old with lung cancer whose 5 year chance of survival was nil, so I should be happy because mine is almost guaranteed to be swell. Don't get me wrong, if I don't die, I'll be very happy. Very happy. But what the hell does it say about our society that he thinks I'd be happier to know some other poor guy's prognosis is hopeless. I'm no ghoul.

He then told me to discharge and get myself back to the pulmonologist so that he could get me scheduled with the thorassic surgeon asap for the removal of my dead lung bits. Back there, I was reminded of how good the rest of my lung looked, and how important it was that I got the dead 1/4 removed now before it got worse, or before the mass grew any larger and blocked my airway completely. Apparently, since I'm not a marathon runner (again, their words) I, like most people, don't use the full capacity of my lungs anyway, so I shouldn't be wholly debilitated by the loss. We'll see what we see, though.

He couldn't reach the surgeon while I was there, so I'm supposed to hear from them in the next two days with my appointment time for meeting the surgeon and setting up the procedure. He expects/hopes that the surgery will be sometime early next week, and expects that as long as it goes well, I'll only be in the hospital for 3-4 days. Right now though, I'm in holding again, waiting for the next appointment time to be given me as I sit and watch my own ability to breathe wax and wane. So far, the worst are the coughing fits. They're abominable. Otherwise, breathing's a bit more strained sometimes, and wheeziness is common, but I'm hanging in.