After my lymphatic abnormality was discovered on the chest X-ray, my parents drove all the way to the university and packed me up for treatment. David was unfortunately extremely sick with the flu, so he could not go with us until he was better. Also, he didn't want to get me sick now that I had to have all sorts of procedures performed on me. Unfortunately, I came down with the flu almost immediately the evening after I had left.
Before we left town, we picked up copies of the scans and headed back to my hometown. The drive felt like an eternity and my fever must have been sky high. I kept going in and out of consciousness and I had absolutely no appetite at all, except for Coke slurpees (who knows why?). What was worse was the horrid metallic taste the CT dye left in my mouth. I felt like I was sucking on aluminum foil. For some odd reason, Coke slurpees were the only thing that helped. Not mints, tic tacs, gum or any other beverage helped. Weird.
I received several phone calls throughout the 6 hour long drive as the news of my diagnosis circulated through our social networks. Honestly, I was in shambles and I hardly listened to much of anything. This was all so sudden and I was so sick that I just didn't care anymore. All I knew is that I wanted a bed, ASAP. Fortunately, I was able to rest my eyes a little on the trip, which made things pass by much more quickly. When we finally arrived back home, the first thing I wanted to do was lay down. The room was spinning and my head felt like it was full of pure cement. I took a short, cold shower to try to bring my temperature down, but I ended up just warming myself back up as soon as I crawled into bed. All night, I tossed and turned, trying to get warm or trying to cool my fickle body temperature. I awoke several times so hot I thought I was going to suffocate. Groggy, I shuffled to the bathroom and managed to turn on the shower several times that night. My parents' shower had a ledge to sit on, which came in handy when I finally passed out in the shower.
The next day, despite my horrid flu, I was taken to a local surgical clinic to get a sample of the mass in my chest. (Admittedly, I was not very empowered to handle my own medical care. I was such an emotional wreck that I sort've just went with the flow.) I received a CT guided core biopsy, which in plain language is a freakin' long needle stuck into your chest that can be seen on a screen. The purpose of this is to take some cells from the mass and test it to see if it is cancerous and what type it was. I undressed, again from the waist up, and was given a lovely cocktail of amnesic drugs via IV. (Sadly, I had become accustomed to needles at this point.) I remember that they laid me down, they put an interesting little temporary tattoo grid over my chest and then, BOOM!-- lights out.
I awoke in the recovery room laying on my stomach with a towel bunched underneath. I deduced that it was to put pressure on the needle entry area and prevent bruising. I blinked long and hard, trying to adjust my eyes to light. I took a deep breath in, the kind you do when you wake up from a long sleep, and suddenly felt a dull ache in my chest. From my mouth eminated a pained, animalistic, "Uhnnnn..ohgod..". Nurse Zane (literally, her name was Zane) must have heard and came to check on me. She helped me turn over on my back. The first thing I noticed about Nurse Zane was that there were bowling balls and pins printed all over her scrubs. I forced a smile and said, "Bowling fan, eh?" She smiled, opening a cup of butterscotch pudding, (hospital grade, yech) "No. Not really." She shoveled big scoops of this pudding into my mouth. As soon as I was done with the first one, she opened up another one and again started shoveling it into my mouth. When I complained, she emphasized the importance of eating, "To prevent nausea". Honestly, I wasn't feeling nauseated until she started shoveling cheap, hospital grade butterscotch pudding into my mouth! At one point it became too much to bear, so I asked if they had something different, like crackers. Nurse Zane returned with an armful of different kinds of crackers and opened two packages, encouraging me to eat and suck on my ice chips. I felt like a pregnant woman. I figured that I was able to do this task on my own and I should unless I wanted Nurse Gluttony to start forcing them down my throat. I was glad to see her busy herself with other tasks than shoveling pudding into my mouth. After a couple of hours, the medications wore off and my parents came to see me. I was sent home the same day.
I waited two weeks for the results of the biopsy. The whole time, I was trying to busy myself with other things. My brain was coming up with all sorts of fanatical premonitions and it was hard to feel like a normal person. I would watch people as they drove by, living their lives without a care. I wanted to badly to be one of those people that only had to worry about their micromanaging boss, what to make for dinner or if their shirt and pants were the same shade of black. For a time, I was feeling pretty jaded. Many people I knew had all sorts of justifications for my cancer development; it's genetic, it's diet, it's stress and you're a grad student, it's just random and you can't control it, God has a plan for you, blah blah blah. At that point, I didn't care WHY I had it. I just wanted to get rid of it! You can imagine how angry I was when I found out that the sample they took during the CT guided core needle biopsy was too small to determine what kind of lymphoma I had. All they could tell me was that it was lymphoma. At that point, I was like "No s**t, Sherlock!" I had already mentally prepared for having cancer; now I was just ready for answers.
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