Lung Biopsy Pre-admission
Yesterday was a roller coaster. And not the smooth, new, metal kind. But the old, rickety, wooden kind that makes you kiss the ground when you when you finally walk away from it—newly appreciative of overpriced blown glass and tacky gift shop trinkets.
I woke up about 5:00 am, dehydrated and dreading my appointments at the hospital. The cortisol was coursing, and my neck and shoulders were tense. I tried to meditate the pain and anxiety away.
By which I mean I was doomed from the start. I knew instinctively if I had to try that hard to calm down it wasn’t going to take, any of it.
Mom drove me to St. E’s in O’Fallon yesterday. Dan took me Thursday. It’s about a 30-minute drive, but it’s pretty excruciating for me. The muscles in my neck tense, making it impossible to turn my head for hours. I don’t say so out loud because it doesn’t change anything, but I fucking hate being in a car.
I went through lung biopsy pre-admission testing for next week’s main event. (If you’re new here: They found a nodule on my lung while checking in on my very angry lymph nodes.)
The first appointment included a thorough recounting of my medical history, rattling off my current medications, standard OR procedure and anesthesia explanations, and a CBC blood test.
It was a two-stick day. Curse the vein gods.
My fellow chronics know how disappointing it is when the nurse has to stick the back of your hand because she can’t find a good vein in your right elbow crook and the one that seemed cooperative in your left elbow crook thought it’d be cute at the last second and roll over and play dead.
(There wasn’t even any blood on the elbow crook bandage when I got home. Might explain why my left arm is always cold.)
When I finished up with that stuff, I went to imaging for a CT of my lungs. The tech had to hug me onto the table. I couldn’t move my legs, and I was dizzy from all the time I’d spent slouched in various transport chairs. She was great, but I was so very sad.
“What is this OSF?” She was asking where I had my last scan, but I was confused.
“There was an OSF hospital in Champaign, but I haven’t lived there for almost two years.” I squinted hard trying to remember while she looked again at her paper. “When do they say I had it?”
“Just last month.”
“Oh,” I said. “That was just across the street at the cancer center. But it’s not called OSF. I don’t know what that’s about.” I remained baffled, but I said the magic word: cancer. Suddenly she understood all manner of things that hadn’t been said.
“Cancer.” It was nice shorthand, considering I was extremely hoarse and still hadn’t recovered from yesterday’s lung function test. Not that the spirometry affected my voice, I was just too fatigued to talk.
(I couldn’t even complete the entire test. There was a pulse oximeter component that was supposed to involve me shuffling around with a walker. I gripped the walker handles so tight, I cut off blood flow to my finger. That’s how anxious I am about falling. The nurse was like “Yeah, no. This isn’t safe for you. I’ll let Dr. Pulmonologist know.”)
Back to Friday though. When everything was done I was hungry, thirsty, and so extremely tired. So I ate something when I got home, and 30 minutes after lunch had to deal with IBS-D.
Usually, when things go acceptably, I plop my butt on the toilet and sing while laughing “looks like we made it.” I did not sing yesterday. I didn’t laugh either.
I was too physically exhausted to control certain muscle groups. Dan is a fucking saint. I don’t want to talk about the details.
That was nadir on the roller coaster track. But the ascent came! I’ll tell you about it next time. I need a nap, and this feels long.
Update: the lung nodule is gone.
