Part 3 - The Diagnosis

When I arrived at the emergency room the doctor on staff ran a couple of EKG tests. From the EKG they noticed that there was an indicator that there may be a blood clot. And so they ordered a CT scan for my chest. Initially I thought that a blood clot was definitely a possibility since I do quite a bit of travel and was actually in Beijing and Singapore three weeks ago. When the results from the CT scan came back the doctor on staff came into my room quite serious and said, "Mate, good news is that there is not a blood clot. But there is an 11 cm mass that we found. Mate nothing grows in this part of your chest. I suggest you call the Misses and have her come in." At that point an oncologist, Dr. Jennens, was called in and he did an examination of my lymph nodes and concluded that we were possibly looking at a lymphoma. He then told me that I will need surgery to remove part of my lymph node in order for a biopsy to be done. This was to give them clearer picture of what we were dealing with. At this point I contacted Amy, gave her the story and she proceeded to come in to the hospital with Olivia. Amazing that abdominal pains from cold medicine has led me down this path of finding out I have cancer. I think I'm very fortunate. The following day I went into surgery, they removed a piece of my lymph node, a biopsy on the lymph node took place, multiple blood tests were done and it was concluded by Jennens that I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My case was then turned over to Dr. Zimet who became my new oncologist. The following day I checked out of the hospital.