We brought my wagon with for him to hang out in when we walked to his appointment.

Transcription

1 Medical Updates Yesterday I went to have my biopsy. I ended up having company for the drive. Kelli came and Kalissa and Carver came too. It turns out, Carver needed his own appointment with the pediatric specialist that deals with his respiratory stuff. Kalissa had to work overnight 12 hour shifts the entire weekend and that s when Carver was sick. It s a croup kind of thing again. It seems he gets a cold and immediately it turns into something nastier that makes breathing not quite so easy. We brought my wagon with for him to hang out in when we walked to his appointment. You can see my those bright red cheeks that he s not feeling the best.

2 I tried to keep Carver busy and didn t hear all of what the doctor said.after the appointment Kalissa sent this message: Carver had an appointment in Lacrosse today with the pediatric allergist after a ROUGH weekend of struggling with croup AGAIN. Unfortunately we didn t find out anything we didn t already know. We suspect Carver will struggle with asthma, we suspect he will struggle with allergies, right now the best diagnosis we have is spasmodic croup. We will be referred on to ENT to hopefully actually look at his upper airway and see if there are any structural abnormalities. For now he is a happy, stridorous, barky little guy. His breathing troubles don t seem to cramp his style which is a blessing..as of today still croupy and now he has a full blown cold. Over the weekend it was only croup. Poor guy. We all just do the only thing we really can and that s loving on him. My appointment for the needle biopsy on my lymph node was a

3 little bit later. We ended up going right over there and checking in. Happily the got me in right away. Here s what I learned: The radiologist that was performing the biopsy had another doctor with him that was in training. It was slightly unnerving. The teaching doc would say things like you re going to have to skim over the top of the carotid artery and then angle the needle and go deep. UGH. For the most part I do really with procedures but having them talk like that made it more annoying. Well in the conversation between the two of them the doctor started saying things like pseudo node and atypical results. Hmm.. The talk went on between the two with me completely in the dark. Finally I got up my nerve and said, Would me mind explaining all of that to me? Well.here s what I got out of it. He thinks the node that I came to have biopsied really isn t a node and is instead scar tissue. He said radiologist techs take pictures and the radiologist that reads the pictures doesn t see things in motion. It looks different if seeing it in motion. He said they would biopsy it but it will like come back saying there was nothing in the sampling to test as scar tissue isn t cellular, thus the finding atypical. So I asked what was in the future for me if that is true which he was 99% sure it was true.he said they would still watch it as there is a chance that it could be a node and they might have gotten a bad sampling in the biopsy. UGH. I m starting to realize that there is no way to really get away from it all. I had hoped once the treatment was over for my thyroid cancer, it would be over. It really isn t. There is no crawling in a hole and pretending it didn t happen. Every six months I ll be back and go through the tests. I know I shouldn t be complaining. This is all WAY better than all the other complications and even death that I could be facing. I just wish that all of this would have been explained to me from the beginning. After this experience

4 I ve learned that health care misses out by not being more informative as to what happens along the way after diagnosis. I feel a lot like my body part is treated but me, not so much. I ve said this before and will say it again and again. I d rather go see my family physician or my chiropractor. I feel like they take me and my life style into consideration when they talk to me. The very best scenario would be that this is a lymph node and that it s benign. Then it won t have to be tested again. The second best case.the is the pseudo node and will produce atypical results. The wait is on I ll let you know when I know. and so the road took us back home. Carver and I were both in the same boat at the end of the day.tired, feeling like our time was wasted and wishing our

5 cases were more definitive. We re both troopers though and know we are in this for the long haul even if we don t always like where our road is taking us. Thanks to all who have thought, prayed or sent good wishes our way. We do appreciate your support.