Total time between when the mediastinal mass was found and I received a “definitive” diagnosis: 130 days Procedures and scans to get there: 7 chest x-rays, 2 CTs, 2 full-body PET scans, 1 MRI, 1 FNA/bronchoscopy, 1 CT-guided core needle biopsy, 1 bronchoscopy/thoracotomy What I owe (not all procedures have been added to the billContinue reading “The Long, Long Road to an Imperfect Diagnosis”
Tag Archives: diagnosis
"When did all this start?"
Medicine, I said, begins with storytelling. Patients tell stories to describe illness; doctors tell stories to understand it. – Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of all Maladies An impossible question, but each new doctor asks it. A question I’ve answered over and over again since they found the grapefruit-sized mass in my chest almost five monthsContinue reading “"When did all this start?"”
The Final Silence: Cancer Walks 