lung cancer the puppet master

It’s slugs that attach to and control people in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction classic about paranoia and mind control, “The Puppet Masters”. … Over the last 11 months, the slug riding me has been my lung cancer diagnosis.

My original pulmonologist fell off my ‘team’ after the third month due his legal problems (financial in nature not medical). Believe it or not yes it has taken this long to find new pulmonologists between apparent shortages in the specialty in our area, insurance compatibility and yes while that slug rode me like a stick horse my focus was lung cancer, lung cancer and lung cancer. 

Sitting down with my newest pulmonologists they stressed sometimes additional lung issues are just about the lungs.

Reviewing the DVD of recent and CT scans for the past year they simply did not agree with some of the radiologist’s reports, pointing out both the risks of false positive readings and that the degree of pulmonology experience varies with radiologists and therefore their reported ‘impressions’ … and yes, oncologists and thoracic surgeons.

As long as I sit down to read a radiologist’s report of a CT scan with that slug riding me every enlarged lymph node I read about is going to freak me out … and the bottom line is that is just not true.

… call them the next time I have a bronchial cough with a cold as antibiotics and steroids to speed up healing would be more productive than having that slug ride me to go get a CT scan which just has to be repeated because the lymph node activity is inconclusive due to the chest cold.

Come on slug … we've got an oncologist appointment this week …

"Move 'em on, head 'em up,

Head 'em up, move 'em out,

Move 'em on, head 'em out Rawhide!"

Patrick Leer

BLOGS:

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

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