They're sellin' razor blades and mirrors in the street

I guess I forgot about this outlet for a while. If a doctor were to tell me I had a tumour slightly larger than a cricket ball somewhere between my stomach and liver at the time of my last post, I'd have been devastated. When they did so last week it was the biggest relief of my life.

For months I've been getting bad reflux and indigestion and the doctors sent me for obscure tests, prescribed antibiotics and for the most part didn't seem interested. It took 4-6 weeks between tests because nobody had the time. Then 3 weeks ago today I got in for an ultrasound, I now presume it was for gallstones. Which were also found. However what was interesting was the other thing they found. An unidentifiable mass. I got the weekend to sweat it then a CT on the Monday which revealed it was an extremely large lymph node. Apparently the only realistic cause is lymphoma (a cancer). The other possibility according to the internet is AIDS. Although Lymphoma is most common to people in their 20's.

So that week I had to see an oncologist and a surgeon and I was admitted to hospital the following Monday (last week) to have it biopsied(as there are many different forms of Lymphoma). At this point I was aware that 80% of cases fall into one category which had roughly 50% chance of surviving 10 years, while the other 20% of cases had 92% chance of survival. At this point it was definitely lymphoma by all accounts. That works out to be less than 60% chance of survival based on what I knew at the time.

I put on a fairly brave face to the people I spoke to but in reality I had never been so scared. A very difficult thing to try to come to terms with.

So the tumour mentioned above has been the best news I could have received really. They misdiagnosis was because the kind of tumour they found is extremely rare. What are the odds?


Anyway I'm still sitting around at home since the fucker was in a bad spot and they had to slice me right open to get at it. Through a whole lot of stomach muscle too. Back in on the 4th of Jan to cut it out.