Thursday, August 14, 2014

Chest Pain


Over the weekend I had been experiencing chest pain when I took in deep breaths or when I swallowed. It was isolated to just the right side behind my breast. It was mostly just annoying, not too terrible of pain. I called over the weekend to make sure it wasn’t something more serious and doctor on call told me it could be a number of things and I should go to the ER to get a chest X-ray if it got any worse. I waited until Monday to check back in and the folks at UT Southwestern were pretty insistent that I go get an X-ray that day and meet with them first thing the next morning. They said that I could definitely have a tumor in my lung without yet having shortness of breath. I told the medical folks that I had just had a lung X-ray with the port surgery but that seemed a long enough time ago (2-3 weeks) to warrant another one. Needless to say, I was pretty stinking worried. They also said it could be thrush but I didn’t have anything weird going on in my mouth so that didn’t seem likely to me.

I’m soooo thankful that the NP called me that night with the results. My chest X-ray came back totally clear. Lungs looked perfect. What a relief that was! Currently they are thinking I have infectious esophagitis and I’m on medicine to hopefully clear it up.  At this point, anything sounds better than metastatic cancer! I’m sure this is one of many random symptoms/issues I will have along the way.

So I thought we were in the clear but then I got a call the next morning telling me after further inspection of the X-ray it looks like there is a kink in my port line. On monday the nurse had trouble drawing blood from the port, so that would make perfect sense.  What that means is I’m scheduled to have a new port placed this Friday morning- yay more surgery! They will put dye into the line before surgery to make sure it definitely needs to be replaced (if there is a leak or something?). I’m glad we found out this week so we could get it fixed in time for chemo next Monday. So my esophagitis led to an X-ray which led to finding a potential problem with the port that could have led to other problems and delayed chemo.  What a blessing!

I'm disappointed in my reaction to thinking the pain was a tumor in my lung. I was tearing up in the X-ray room, crying as we left the hospital, sobbing on the way home picturing the boys growing up without a mom, and making plans for the next month before I would die.  I think it made me realize that I'm not truly "holding my life loosely". Over the years I've worked to hold my home, job, even my family members loosely - that is, recognizing them to be gifts from God that He could easily take away if it was His will. I honestly never considered that I needed to hold my very life loosely.  Just as I am only a steward of the money or material possessions God has blessed me with, I am only a steward of the time on this earth God graces me with. My hope is that I would be a good steward of the money, talents, and now time, that has God blessed me with- no matter how long or how short that may be, while knowing He has a greater purpose if He does choose to end my life through this disease.

1 comment:

  1. I think grace is being extended to you through Jesus moment by moment. None of us is able to hold our lives loosely without Jesus. And by God's grace each step of this journey is pointing you more towards Jesus.

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