Get your cavity checked

I was ready. As ready as one can be to start a six month, three drug chemotherapy regimen. Mentally, I was informed, focused on my first cycle that should have started today. Physically? Well, yet again, my body had another plan.

When we sat down yesterday and waited over 40 minutes for my haematologist to give me the "pre-chemo check" I knew something was wrong. All we needed to do was go over the drugs, side effects, sign the consent and discuss my recent investigations.

One of the first things she told me was that there is an 8mm cavitating lesion in my lung on last weeks CT. The same CT scan that I vomited in my mouth - then swallowed it, after reacting to the contrast dye. She didn't say where, or describe any of its features, but she told me she was shocked and safe to say, so was I. She asked me if I had a cough, fevers and asked when my most recent test was for tuberculosis. (It was five years ago). My CT scan last year was clear. Sometime in the past year I have grown a lesion in my lung that could potentially be life threatening if I were to start chemotherapy without knowing what this is.

All of a sudden, I knew the plan was changed. Just like that my mental energy that was preparing for the biggest fight of my life was now focused on possibly another fight. A problem in my lungs? You can't be serious. I'm finally coming to terms with a blood cancer and undergoing treatment, yet now this having just leukaemia in isolation is my new best case scenario.

The differentials continue to run through my head and I've decided this time, to just stop and be a patient. It is doing me no good to read research papers on cavitating lung lesions without having more information. Its in my nature, but I've learned to change and adapt. Though I'm a participant in the waiting game yet again let me tell you, its the hardest part.

It is interesting to be so mentally prepared and then all of a sudden be back in the passenger seat - waiting. I find that each time I am forced to sit and wait for news or a plan, I cope less. Perhaps the hardest thing for me right now is to cope with being on someone else's time. When my patients are waiting for an important investigation, I make sure I call them as soon as I receive the outcome. I really only started doing this after diagnosis, knowing how awful it is to wait.

For today, its the waiting game in order to be safe tomorrow. Luckily I got my cavity checked. Things really could have gotten ugly.

#leukemia #cavitating #lunglesion #infectiousdisease