As some of you know I had an open heart quad bypass last year. But I haven’t shared what else I’m going through with anyone but GM… he’s gone now, and I feel it’s time to share.
Following open heart I had a very serious set back in my recovery with a plural effusion, a serious build up of fluid in the plural space between the heart and lungs. This was allowing fluid to build up and hindering my ability to breathe. And my pulmonologist ran a series of test to see what was causing it and found NSCLC or non-small cell lung cancer, stage 2.6, I think. So I got to experience two surgeries for the effusion, one to install a drain to drain the fluid at home, which I did. The second to seal the space…
Then I was off for three rounds of chemo and immunotherapy. The first two were a breeze. They left me a little tired but otherwise fine. The third was not that. I developed pneumonia and spent 6 weeks trying not to die. And at 6 weeks I had some deep lung remnants of that pneumonia that had to go or I could not get the lobectomy surgery on my lung to remove the cancer.
Fast forward to last week and I find out that my lung function is not completely recovered and breathing is worse than before the chemo per test results. So that means the surgery is delayed again until at least November, while they try to improve my breathing. But the good news is that my lung cancer appears to be gone, dead. My doctor says if they can’t see it, or it doesn’t show up in test, removal may not be necessary. So, now I wait until November.
This week I found out that my bladder cancer is still gone at my 2.5 year checkup. Only 2.5 more to go for me to be considered cured.
