The Follow-Up

Monday after Thanksgiving was the follow up with the doctor I had yet to actually meet to discuss the results of my bloodwork and lack of response to the anti-biotics. I approached this appointment with much intrepidation.

Turns out we didn't discuss the blood work other than to say that "it didn't show us anything" but we did have an extensive discussion about other potential diagnoses. Some sort of viral infection including cat scratch fever (yes, it's a real thing) was still on the table but this was the first time that the C-word was explicitly dropped.  Obviously I had already stressed on that one quite a bit so it wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise were the cancers she chose to list as possible candidates: stomach and pancreatic. Again, no medical or cancer expert here but I knew those where not good things to have. She mention did that these were a very remote possibility and for some reason, I had to ask if lymphoma was still on the table. She said it was and I was wondering why she hadn't started with that one instead of the big, bad scary guys.

We then discussed the best and quickest way of getting a determinate answer on the cancer questions. This was getting more stressful due the fact that on top of this potential cancer issue, I was sitting on a nice new job offer from Conoco Phillips how to factor this medical issue into that decision process. She said a lymph node biopsy would get us a definite answer on the cancer issue and setup an appointment with an ENT doctor to have this done. She said it was non-surgical, they could just stick a needle in it, pull out some cells, and do the analysis.

I went home after the appointment and again went into Google research mode to find out about pancreatic and stomach cancer and was relieved to see that there are very definitive symptoms associated with both of them and I was exhibiting none of them (lack of appetite, aversion to eating meat...NOPE). I don't know what the hell she was talking about but thanks for the 5-minute thrill.