O.T.- C.T. Scan Wednesday A.M.

I go tomorrow morning for a second C.T. scan on a spot in my right lung. This is a follow-up from Dec 15 of last year to see if anything's changed. It may be something left over from when my paternal Grand Daddy lived with us and had TB when I was about 10-11 years old. If I get results back tomorrow from the Dr. online, I'll post it.

About 20 years ago, a doctor (not my regular family doctor) saw several white spots on my lungs on a routine chest xray and went berserk. He diagnosed it as metastastic lung cancer and ordered every test known to the medical profession that even remotely applied.

I said, "Wait a minute!" I talked with my family doctor, who was also a water skiing and deer hunting buddy. He contrived to look at that xray and said all it looked like to him was some scar tissue from a previous infection of some sort. He asked me if I cleaned a lot of chicken houses as a kid, 'cause chicken manure contains ammonia. He said let's wait 90 days and take another xray and see if anything changes.

I sweated out 90 days and Doc took another xray. The spots didn't look like they'd changed. He then poked through his files and found another chest xray he'd taken 12 years before. Identical. The only way to tell the difference between the two was by the dates imprinted on them. In his own dry way, he said, "Well, I still don't know what those spots are, but I guess if they were anything to worry about you'd have been dead a long time ago".

Then it dawned on my. The clinic the first doctor worked in was in the process of a major remodeling. All that bone head wanted was to milk me and my insurance company for every nickel he could to help pay for the remodeling. And if anyone had called him on those spots he could have always said he saw them and was just playing I safe.

I will pray for you. I had an X-ray several years ago for pre-ops. I was scheduled for shoulder surgery on a Monday. Got a call on Saturday saying forget the surgery, go to lung specialist on Monday. The nurse came to the wafting room and got me, on the way down the hall, she said: "The fall that damaged your shoulder, may have been the best thing that ever happened to you; we may not have known that you had lung cancer until it was too late." To make a long story short, I went through a lot of sleepless nights and extensive test before they decided that it was simply a scar caused from having Pneumonia when I was younger.

I didn"t have an old base line x-ray, so when a spot showed on my lungs years ago, the dr asked if I worked with turkeys. (I thot some previous coworkers might be described that way). It was attributed to grain dust, when I worked a bin that was warm. Spot hasn"t changed in 20 years.

My brother in law went in for a pre-op for neck surgery and they found a small mass on his pancreas. It was cancer so they removed part of the pancreas and put him on some wicked chemo. Today he is a pancreatic cancer survivor for four years with nothing new showing up. Pancreatic cancer is usually a death sentence. He did have the neck surgery later.

My back has hurt for 30 years but I tuffed it out until my legs started getting hot and numb. went to the doctor, got x-rays and sent for an M R I which slowed a bad disc, few days later a nurse called and said somebody might have spotted an aneurysm on my aorta from the x ray. Dr. told me to go to the hospital and have another look at the aorta within 6 months and exercises were supposed to help the back. Maybe 9 mo. later I tell the doctor to send me to a back surgeon, I'm tired of it, doc. says he don't see where I had the aneurysm checked out, I forgot. They found 2 more ready to bust when they looked again. Had five stents in a hurry, painful sob. Back still hurts, maybe worse but I hate to mention it to the doc again, what might they accidently find next.