A Whole New World of Illness

It has been years since I’ve posted, but it is time to pull out the old blog because I have news – and not the good kind.

I had a lung nodule show up on a CT for kidney stones in 2019. It wasn’t thought to be much of anything, but it kept growing so it was finally decided to do a biopsy to check what it was. However, they ended up finding out that I have lung cancer. Usually this type of thing isn’t caught until it is stage III or IV when it has grown significantly or has spread to other parts of the body and is much, much harder to treat, however because it happened to show up on the kidney scan and was seen growing, it appears to have been caught in Stage I.

The exact details are still unknown, but I’m being sent to Cleveland Clinic to most likely have surgery to remove the tumor as well as a section of my lung surrounding it to make sure the whole cancer is removed. Surgery locally would be “open” and take much longer to heal while Cleveland Clinic can do it thoracoscopically (with robots) and have a much faster recovery period. It doesn’t look like at this time I will need to have chemo or radiation and there is hope that it will be possible to get it all with surgery.

I’ve sat here with a blank blog post trying to figure out the “right” way to tell people I have cancer and what to say about it, but the truth is…I’m not sure what to say. It is hard to say, “I have cancer,” because it sounds so foreign. Even though this is the best case scenario finding it this early, it is still scary. And the idea of someone cutting into my lungs and removing a section is scary too. I’ve been through ALL the emotions the past week trying to process everything.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say as things progress, but I’m going to stop here. One thing I do want to say is that I’ve already gotten more support from the people I’ve told about my diagnosis of cancer than I ever got with any of my chronic illnesses. Think of someone you know who has a chronic illness and reach out to them today. Just check on them, offer to help, let them know they are thought of – even if it seems like everything is “fine.”