Diagnosis Difficuties

The middle of February 2011 marks the one year anniversary of my initial quest for answers as to what was going on with my body at the time. Of course, Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma wasn't even within the scope of my radar. For many years I had been susceptible to a deep nagging cough that I wrote off as some form of bronchitis. It would hang around for several weeks and then eventually disappear. Well, in February 2010 I was driving home from work having a bit of a coughing attack when all of a sudden I had a shooting pain near my armpit and tingling down in my left hand. As anyone who has ever even heard the basic symptoms of a heart attack would I immediately that I was having one. I made it home and called up my Kaiser advice nurse who wanted me to come in right away (I chose to set an appointment for the following morning as symptoms had subsided). My doctor ran some tests including an EKG and decided that I did not have a heart attack but wasn't sure what had caused my sensations. For my cough he gave me a cough syrup with codeine and told me to check back if it didn't leave.

It left, but a few months later returned along with a strong itching all over my chest. This time my doctor gave me antibiotics for possible pneumonia and some Triamcinolone Acetonide cream for what he thought was eczema. I finished the cycle of antibiotics but with no noticeable improvement. I informed him that the itching had gotten worse, that it was even on my eyelids but he still said stayed on the eczema trail. Furthermore, I had been having a difficult time this past hockey season getting my lungs back. I knew that I was getting older and that bodies change but this seemed rather sudden. I had also developed a large protruding vein from the base of my neck down to the top of my left shoulder. This he was puzzled by and he decided to order a chest x-ray. The x-ray showed something large in or around my left lung. So, of course, the next step was a CAT scan which confirmed that there was a 8 cm by 11.5 cm mass on the outside of my left lung which had been pressing up against my artery and restricting blood flow thus causing the swelling.

All that was left to do at this point was to do a biopsy with this needle device shot through my chest a few times (which was quite creepy but nowhere near as bad as I had imagined) to see if the mass was malignant or benign. By the time the results were in it was already the second half of September. I was officially diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and my new journey about to begin. I only wish that I had known some of these symptoms were not uncommon with Lymphoma and would have been able to shorten my 7 month diagnosis process and start the treatment plan earlier.