Living with Lung Cancer

It’s been 18 days since my last post, and my how things have changed in those 18 days! The pain in my right upper chest got a lot worse, and I developed a headache that has continued to escalate. Those symptoms led to my getting a bone scan two days ago and a CT scan yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to see a doctor yet about those two scans, but I have the reports and they are disturbing. The lesion in my right rib, which once was “tiny,” is now a mass measuring 2.0 x 2.5 inches. My strong hunch is that that’s what’s causing my chest pain. There are also metastatic nodules throughout both lungs and my liver. The headaches are pretty bad. Tylenol Arthritis doesn’t affect them. I see my oncologist Tuesday. She’ll review all the scans and, if necessary, formulate a new treatment plan. Then I’ll get a brain MRI Wednesday and see several other doctors over the next week. I’ll post another update next weekend after I’ve gotten recommendations from all those doctors. In the meantime,

Today I saw my oncologist and got a phone call from my new radiation oncologist. They were both incredibly happy with and encouraged by the results of my most recent scans. I told both doctors that over the last three or four days I had a sharp pain around my right breast. I was beginning to wonder if not only was I a non-smoker with lung cancer, but perhaps I was also a guy with breast cancer. Wouldn’t that have been interesting? But my oncologist suspects it was caused by my (defiantly) lifting a 40-pound bag of fertilizer at about the time this started. She suggested that if it isn’t better in two weeks, I should call and she’ll schedule a bone scan. My new radiation oncologist pointed out that the pain is precisely where the metastatic lesion in my rib is. He agreed with my oncologist that I should get a scan in a couple of weeks if the pain isn’t better by then. Concerning the three lesions in my skull and a new lesion on my C1 vertebra, they are tiny and they haven’t dramatic