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Went to the ER for food poisoning on November 27 after eating some bad pumpkin pie. I've never puked so hard in my entire life, which caused my oxygen saturation level to drop to 91% (instead of the normal >95%). The doc did a chest CT.

The CT showed a 13 mm by 17 mm nodule in the middle lobe of my right lung. That's a pretty good size. It wasn't there in February 2020. Of course, the "C" word was mentioned, so I was referred to an oncologist. I saw him yesterday.

My physical exam was negative. No cough. No coughing up blood. No pain. No shortness of breath. No swollen lymph nodes. I mentioned the "ground glass opacity" finding on my chest CT from February 2020 and he also thinks I had COVID. I mentioned histoplasmosis, since I have a pet bird. You could see the light bulb come on over his head.

Anyway, I have a positron emission tomography (PET) scan scheduled for December 26th. If that comes back negative, then the nodule is simply a benign granuloma, histoplasmosis lesion (which is treatable with meds), or remnants of a tuberculosis incident from 1988.

To quote the oncology nurse, who I've known for 30 years, "He's not too concerned."

Best wishes for a belated Christmas present of a negative cancer result. My wife has a small node on her lung. Doctor checked it every 6 months for 2 years and when it didn't change in size or position, told her to come back in 10 years to check it again. Hopefully you will get the same prognosis.

DXing wrote:Best wishes for a belated Christmas present of a negative cancer result. My wife has a small node on her lung. Doctor checked it every 6 months for 2 years and when it didn't change in size or position, told her to come back in 10 years to check it again. Hopefully you will get the same prognosis.

Thanks, James.

Press the fight!

Best of luck, you are in my thoughts and prayers.

Press on.

I've seen more doctors in the last 6 weeks than I have in the last 6 years.

MRI and EEG and ECG blah, blah, blah . . . I don't speak "doctor".

Nothing to report.

I'm still here.

Hopefully we shall all have good cause to remain not too concerned! No exiting through the forward boarding door yet, brutha!

I had a PET scan on Saturday and got the CD of it at 1 PM today. I popped it in the computer and looked... I know what to look for. They scanned from the top of my head all the way down to my knees.

This pic is of the "slice" where my tumor is supposed to be. If it is a cancer tumor, it lights up in bright, vivid colors. As you can see, there is no color. In fact, my entire scan from head to knees showed no color. That's my heart in the center. You can also see my vena cava and ribs and scapula. The black area around my heart is my lungs... My cancer-free lungs. Bottom line: No cancer. Not even the nodule that showed up on the other hospital's CT scan from two weeks ago.

That's a relief to me, so I can only imagine what you're feeling.

Good to hear that, brutha!!! Looks like 2021 is already looking up.

Really glad to read this

I had a follow-up visit with my oncologist on January 28th. I was sitting in the clinic exam room for 15 minutes and was starting to doze off when he burst through the door without knocking, nearly scaring me shitless. The first words out of his mouth were, "Good news! No cancer! In fact, the lung nodule that the Hudson ER doctor saw on your chest CT on January 27th is gone. No idea what it was." I replied, "I figured the PET scan was negative. I got a CD of it and viewed it at home. Not even a dot of yellow from a pissed-off lymph node! Does this point toward a fungal thing, like histoplasmosis?" He said, "The PET scan would have picked up on that, too, but there's nothing there. Your lungs are perfectly healthy." He said I needed to follow-up with my nurse practitioner soon to plan future follow-ups regarding this humbling incident. "You don't need to come back to see me in the future," he said.

So, yesterday, I visited my nurse practitioner. She says I'm one of her favorite patients because I always come in with a self-diagnosis and acceptable treatment plan. Yesterday was no different. I suggested no further follow ups regarding my cancer scare. "Maybe another chest CT if signs and symptoms recur," I said, to which she agreed. She listened to my lungs and said they were perfectly clear. After listening to my heart, she, as expected, commented on the presence of a minor functional heart murmur (which I've had since 1993).

Now, if I can just get the swelling in my lower legs to go down and get rid of my mild shortness of breath upon exertion. Too much salt-laden ham on Christmas and too much leftover ham on the following days. A touch of congestive heart failure, I suspect. I'll just double up on my Bumex diuretic pills until the symptoms are gone... and stop eating the leftover ham.