...Find me a Find, Catch me a Catch.

I switched over my surgical needs to my Mom's surgeon, who I will refer to as Dr. D. I was pleased to find that she was part of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and was very professional, compassionate and thorough. I brought in tow to my first meeting with Dr. D, my sister who flew over last minute, and David who was finally able to join me and of course my two parents. My sister really helped me get my s**t together mentally and I am not sure if I would have been able to take control of my care if she hadn't been there.

I asked that my parents and sister stay in the waiting area and asked David to come with me to take notes. We waited only a few short minutes and Cara, the surgeon's nurse, came to talk to me and get a little medical history. We discussed how I discovered the lump, how it felt, did it hurt, what have other docs said and so forth. (At this time, all of this information became a script because I had told the same story a dozen times already.) The nurse gathered CD copies of my scans and left the room. Soon, Dr. D returned, shook my hand and introduced herself. She asked me to explain what I know already, which made me feel like a n00b, but she felt comfortable that I understood what was going on. She palpitated the mass over my collarbone and asked me why the previous surgeon did not excise the mass here instead of doing an invasive and painful procedure in my chest. Moreover, she told me that no doctor should be able to determine which cancer you have (or if it is even cancerous) by simply looking at scans and images (unlike the stupid doc at the university, even if she was right later down the road.)
She was confident that what I had going on was one of three things,largely because of the behavior/location of the masses in my chest: 1. Hodgkin's lymphoma (was the most likely) 2. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (which was the null hypothesis if it was definitely not Hodgkin's) and 3. Thymoma (which is a cancer of the thymus, a gland that sits close to the heart). She added that because of my age, Hodgkin's was extremely likely. That was a huge relief for me because Hodgkin's is very treatable. I had read about Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and some of the literature was frightening. They scheduled an excisional biopsy a few days later and gave me all sorts of paperwork about how to take care of the incision and the prescriptions I would need etc. I went home feeling a little more in control of things and happy that I switched my surgical care to Dr. D.