The Back Story

I am horrible with time. Pretty much everything to do with time. Being on time, telling time, any sort of time relationship. My wife can tell you to the day when something happened 4 years ago, I can't be sure if something happened yesterday or 3 weeks ago. All this to say I'm going to attempt to go back and explain how we got here.

I had a persistent cough for the better part of October. It just wasn't getting any better. It got to the point that my loving wife threatened that one of us was not going to make it unless one of us went to the doctor. So when the chills and sweats and body aches came I broke down and went to the doctor (a big step for us guys, I know). So Wednesday October 14th I went to my family doctor and he said I had the bug of the year and gave me antibiotics. By the following Tuesday the 20th I wasn't any better and so I called my doctor once again. He wrote me a prescription for a new and more powerful antibiotic. The next day I couldn't make it through work. I came home about noon and slept until 8:30......am......Thursday. About 10 or so Thursday my wife and I decided that maybe I should go to the ER to make sure I don't have regular flu, swine flu, pneumonia, etc. In the ER they tested for both strains of flu, pneumonia, and took some blood. I told the ER doctor that it felt a lot like Mono which I had before in high school. She said you can't get Mono twice (Liar) and they ordered a chest X-ray because of the cough. Then they ordered a CT scan of my chest, didn't really think much of it at the time, just standard procedure. After another half hour or so they came by and told me that on the X-ray and the CT scan they discovered a mass in my lung (Liar) and that I would need to follow up with my family doctor to schedule a biopsy. I'm sorry you found a what? And you need me to do what?

Honestly the first thing I thought of is how in the world am I going to tell my wife without her freaking out. Do what you want to me or with me but do not make my wife suffer. Allow me to let the ladies in on a little secret: Nothing is more devastating to a man than being helpless when their wife is in pain. I keep thinking in our storied journey together that I have learned to not accept this feeling but live with it, and I'm still wrong every time.

Anyhow, that Friday the 23rd of October I met with my family doctor and I asked him to draw some more blood to test my Iron levels and test for Mono because I was still exhausted. Turns out I tested positive for Mono and the mass was not in my lung at all but growing in my chest cavity. The official term is an anterior mediastinal mass. It's a pretty good size, too, about 3 inches around. It's bunched all in there next to my wind pipe, my pulmonary artery, and some other things I'm pretty sure are fairly important but it had never pushed on, impeded, or cut off any of those things so it was never detected. My doctor set me up with a Thoracic specialist on Monday the 26th. From there the Thoracic specialist set up my biopsy on the 2nd of November. And now we are here.

I have my first appointment with the Oncologist this Wednesday. This will be our first chance to ask all the specifics about what's going to happen and when. Through all of this it's easy to miss the fact that if I hadn't gone to the ER that day, if I hadn't had the crazy cough, if I hadn't gotten Mono twice, this thing would still be growing inside me and no one would be the wiser. Goes beyond coincidence, don't you think?

Peace,
Ben