The recovery and follow-up

It’s been almost a week since my meeting with Mr. Needle, and I’m healing up just fine. I had a follow-up visit with my radiologist (it gave me chills walking back into that place!), and he said that I’m doing well except for some fluid in my lung, probably about a liter or so, and guess what he advised? Yup. And if that doesn’t work, there’s another procedure we can use called a pleurodesis. This procedure scars the lining of the lung to the chest wall, so that no fluid can get in there. It’s a procedure that requires hospitalization, and so of course, I don’t want to do it. The fluid could be caused by the tumor or by some inflammation in my lung. Fusing the lung and the chest wall together to keep fluid out won’t eliminate either the tumor or the inflammation, so the fluid could still be generated. Where will it go? Surely someone has the answer. Dr. R. said that most people who have it done can breathe much better afterward. (The good doctor also said that jogging would be out of the question, but I could still play tennis once I healed. I wonder why he thought those things were relevant in my world!) Anyway, once healed up, life would proceed as usual, so that part was encouraging.

Sometimes I think that I’m falling apart; section by section. I feel like I get a good grip on today’s issues, and then something else torpedoes in and then I have to scramble. Is this a test of will? Attitude? Endurance? Faith? As though it matters at all. To say that I’m tired of this game is a HUGE understatement.

I’m a little cynical this week; I guess, it’s been a hard week for me and I’m tired. There have been some personal issues going on in addition to these health issues, and it all just seemed to crash in on me early in the week. You’ve heard that saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Well, it was, and I wanted to. Yup, a one-way ticket to Anywhere-But-Here was sounding pretty darn good. But I was needed here more than I wanted to leave, so here I stayed. Thank you E. for talking me off the ledge and not giving me a shove. I owe you big. Again.

¶ 6:41 AM