It's been a long time since I whined about my health so I figure I deserve to whine a little.
I was sick at the end of December. I mean really sick. I was hacking, easily lost my breath, running a high fever and generally feeling downright miserable. It was SO bad that I made an appointment with another doctor in my pulmonologist's office.
He took a swab and told me to get an X-Ray which I dutifully did the next day. He also gave me an antibiotic just in case.
The X-Ray was negative but the swab showed that that I had a type of flu. He told me to let it run its course.
Well, let me tell you, that course seemed to take forever. The fever went away but the hacking and shortness of breath remained. I also had this problem of food getting stuck while eating. I had this before and the Gastroenterologist did a dilation, but this was different, so I made a gastro appointment.
My Gastro guy had me schedule an esophagram. This will become important later.
In the meantime my appointment with my regular pulmonologist got push out to the second week of June which pushed it out beyond my next CT Scan and thoracic surgeon appointment which were in late April.
Things didn't go well with the CT Scan. There was an enlarged lymph node, from 8 mm too 1.1 cm, a lesion and a thickening of the lung lining. The radiologist wasn't sure but didn't think is was anything malignant. The thoracic surgeon said he thought it was all related to my flu episode.
I made the point that three months had passed since the worst of the flu and, while I wasn't feeling perfect, things had definitely improved. He hit me with the "when you get older" explanation.
I'm going to get a little sign made that says "When You Get Older," and hold it up whenever a doctor goes into that kind of explanation.
Anyway, he said to do it again is three months just to be sure. I had that CT Scan last week and the report was encouraging, but not perfect. The radiologist wants it done again in three months. I see the thoracic surgeon on Wednesday.
In the meantime, I went for the esophagram. You have to drink this foul tasting stuff but I had barely started when the radiologist started yelling for me to stop. Apparently I was aspirating the liquid into my lungs and, rather than let me drown (only kidding), he stopped the test.
There was enough to show that I had a pocket where food was getting caught and food, rather than staying in my esophagus, was sometimes getting into my lungs. Isn't that just dandy?
The gastro guy sent me to an ENT who suggested I see a doctor that specializes in swallowing. I didn't even know there was such a thing. The problem is the swallowing guy isn't available until the end of August. He works out of Mt. Sinai and is usually in New Jersey twice a week, but not during the summer and I'm not crazy enough to go into Manhattan.
The last piece to this mosaic of chaos is I finally got to see my pulmonologist and she hit me with a triple. I got a steroid, which I think did wonders, an antibiotic just in case, which I don't think did anything, and a prescription for a nebulizer and associated medicine.
I was supposed to do the nebulizer twice a day for 30 days. But she gave me enough refills for about six months and the medicine costs $0. It really loosens up phlegm. I wonder if you can get addicted to this because when I stopped doing it in the evening I woke up the next morning choking pretty badly.
So I went back to doing it twice a day. I'll see what the thoracic surgeon says but I suspect that he'll tell me to check with the pulmonologist. Unfortunately she's out on leave and won't be available until October.
Oh yeah, one more thing. I saw the eye doctor a couple of weeks ago and she gave me prescriptions for reading glasses and glasses for night driving. I went to Warby Paker, and the night driving glasses are supposed to come tomorrow, but I haven't heard anything about the reading glasses yet and those are the ones I'm most interested in.
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