August 31, 2023 Is It Really the Five Year Anniversary of my Cancer Diagnosis Today?! 8/31/2023 Five years ago today, this gem of a photo was taken: That photo was taken just before I went into surgery to remove an almond sized lump from my right armpit that multiple physicians were confident was just a fatty deposit. Little did we know when the photo was taken just how much our life together would change following that surgery. I still remember coming out of anesthesia and Kim telling me that my uncle had informed her that what he had pulled out was cancerous. I remember spending days wondering what the biopsy would reveal and hoping that it was a “good” cancer to get, only to find out that it was one of the “bad” cancers to get: melanoma. Not just melanoma, but melanoma that was already in an advanced stage given that it came from a lymph node. Fortunately, my naivete prevented me from responding the way the rest of my family responded. I just figured I’d beat it and move on. As we b...
September 6, 2018 About 3 weeks ago I discovered a lump in my right armpit. I hadn't noticed it before and it raised some concerns. I went to see my doctor and I had some blood work done and an ultrasound done to see what it was. After the ultrasound results came back, we decided it should probably be removed. There weren't any concerns about it at this point, but we still felt it should come out. My uncle is a general surgeon and, upon examining the lump, felt confident it was benign and noth ing to worry about. However, he still felt it should come out. Last Friday I had surgery to remove the lump. After removing it, my uncle told Kim that he had some concerns based on what he had seen. If it was bad, we figured it would be lymphoma based on it being in my lymph node. Lymphoma is quite treatable and, if it had to be cancer, we'd hoped for that. Yesterday, we got the results of the biopsy. Unfortunately, it was not lymphoma. It was metastatic melanoma. It...
So on October 31st, I had an appointment with the PA for my back doctor. I had emergency spinal surgery on February 10th to remove a lesion that was compressing my spinal cord. The compression caused me to lose movement in both of my legs and the ability to urinate normally. So that was almost 9 months ago. Unfortunately, I still struggle on a daily basis with pain at the incision site as well as extreme soreness and discomfort in the muscles between my shoulder blades. The pain at the incision site is a random, all day type of pain. The discomfort between my shoulder blades tends to get worse as the day goes on. The more I do throughout the day, the worse the pain is. In fact, there are times that I struggle to stand up anymore because the pain is so much. I'm not an expert, but I had assumed that after 9 months this type of pain would have been resolved. I know the muscles in my back are being asked to do more and to adjust, but I thought that would have been resolved a while ago...
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