It's a Kundus

It's a Kundus

Oh boy. This is going to be a long one. Entertaining though, I promise.

At the very end of July, I got sick. Your basic cough, sore throat, earache situation.
A few days later, I felt worse. So I went to Urgent Care. The doctor there was unhelpful. He was like "your ears might hurt, but I can't see anything, so they definitely aren't infected." He prescribed antibiotics and refused to back-date a work note and even when I asked for the note to be written for like, one or two more days off, he was like "no, you're fine to return to work tomorrow."
I think he thought I was exaggerating or that my symptoms were psychosomatic or something.

A few days after that, I was still getting noticeably worse. Shawn was like "OH MY GOD JUST GO TO YOUR DOCTOR." So I went to my GP.
And she was all "Um, your ears are super infected and he didn't give you an inhaler? I'm prescribing an inhaler. And you're totes going on leave, because, um, hello. And also you need a chest X-ray, because - damn."

I almost skipped the chest x-ray, because who wants to do that, especially just to find out, sure enough, you're sick, keep taking those antibiotics." And every road from my GP's office to the lab was like, one-lane construction both ways.

But I went. Because I didn't have anything else to do that day and I like and respect my GP (New, btw. I just switched practitioners in April.)
So I went.
We borrowed some money from my dad for the super-not-cheap-even-after-shitty-insurance inhaler.
I started to improve.
V-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y.

So the next day, I get a phone call from the office. My Dr.'s nurse. This is the conversation we had:
NURSE: So, remember that spot on your lung from like, 5 years ago?
ME: No.....
NURSE: That doesn't ring a bell? A chest scan from 2014 showed a small spot?
ME: No......
NURSE: Not at all?
ME: ...........
NURSE: Anyway, in 2014 a small spot was found on your lungs. And it's grown since then, so Dr. Awesome wants you to have a CT scan. We've scheduled it for X.
ME: Oh-kay.....
NURSE: You were really never aware of this?
ME: Um...I remember some rando doctor at Urgent Care mentioning it back in 2016, but he said it was small and not uncommon and not to worry about it and also I had a fever of 103° and I forgot about it the second I walked out of the clinic. (No one was with me at the time.)
NURSE: huh.

So...several days later, we do a CT scan. And the next day I read the report from the radiologist on my hospital portal.
It says: (in a nutshell)

Moreover, it says the nodule is 2.5cm in diameter, is spiculated, and they have no idea what it is. But they can't rule out Cancer, so we think we should do a biopsy, but we need a pulmonologist to look at it first. 

Wait 17 days for appointment with pulmonologist. In the mean time, still sick, still off work. Get follow-up X-ray one night at the ER when I'm coughing hideously and also can't breathe. Find out - hey, you had Whooping Cough because some asshat didn't vaccinate their sprog, but it's ok, because your second round of antibiotics are kicking that down and it's almost gone now anyway.
Get return to work note. After six weeks of unpaid leave, return to work with significantly reduced hours. 

Appointment with pulmonologist, whom I'll call Dr. Ass, finally arrives. He knew his shit, for sure. But he was a total assface. At one point,  he asked me a question, and when I started to answer, explaining that the symptom had been there off and on for years but I always blew it off, he said (and this is a direct quote:) - "I don't need you to explain, just answer the question." 

Ok, damn.

I continued explaining my symptoms and also said that I was aware that my weight could create some of the symptoms, but not to the degree I'd been experiencing, and I was aware that my weight was probably exacerbating some of them, but still, I was unable to shake whatever-the-kundus. 

He then continued to explain that he didn't think The Kundus actually was anything, probably just a random benign growth. He then went on to yammer about my weight and basically said: 

 

Then he was like "Well, I suppose we should do a biopsy. If they can even do a biopsy, because you are a really big girl." 

 

So we go to do the biopsy. 

And.....NOPE.

Because The Kundus is directly beneath a rib, and also resting directly between two major blood vessels. So they're like "we literally cannot biopsy this without running the risk of stabbing one of two major blood vessels and then we'd have to rush you into trauma surgery and well, let's not."

I agreed, because, duh. But I was still annoyed.
So they were like "we'll do a PET scan instead." 

So they send the non-biopsy stuff to the pulmonologist so he can recommend the PET scan, and after a few days, that goes through and I have the PET scan. 

Which, after everything, was like, the least obnoxious part of the whole thing. Get a shot of some nuclear medicine, lay in a dark, quiet room for an hour, go to the bathroom, get the scan, done. 

A few days after that, get the notice from the pulmonologist that yes, the Kundus lit up on the scan image, so he's referring me to a cardiothoracic surgeon.

So a bit later I have the appointment with Dr. Bob. (Totally not his name, but he seems like a Dr. Bob.) He goes over what the surgery to remove the kundus would entail, how he would go about it, what the risks and heal time would be. He was very confident (but not in an obnoxious, cocky way), and even said he felt it was probably the random benign growth that the pulmonologist put in his notes. He said - and I quote - "I would be willing to be $1000 that's what it is." 

My appointment with him was on a Monday and we scheduled the surgery for Thursday morning. It was either that Thursday or wait a couple weeks, which would've been fine, but I was SO BEYOND READY to just get it out, whatever it was, so I went with the earlier date.

And there we have it. I started this long post the night before I went in and ten days out from release, I'm now finishing it. 

So that is how I spent my summer, and how we went from normal la-la-life to major surgery and a hospital stay.