A Date With My Wife?

Today I’m posting early because my wife and I are heading to the big city about an hour away. 

Our dates in Virginia Beach.

We’re not taking the girls, but it’s (unfortunately) not a date trip. I have an appointment at a hematology/oncology clinic for a CT scan.

Whenever you say “oncology” people tend to think cancer for obvious reasons. I haven’t been diagnosed with cancer, but I’m being monitored to see if I might be developing it.

See, about a year ago, I was having stomach pain coupled with this feeling of something swollen near my rib cage. I went to the doctor about it, and he noticed on the CT Scan an overall swelling of my lymph nodes around my stomach. Now, this was not a huge swelling, but abnormal nonetheless, so the doctor referred me to the aforementioned hematology/oncology clinic for further treatment (or observation, which is mostly what they have done).

I’m sort of at the midpoint of the 2 year plan to observe me, take my blood, and scan me to make sure that I don’t have a slow-growing lymphoma.

I haven’t really told that many people about this, and I honestly don’t even think about it that much because I don’t feel sick and nothing’s been diagnosed. And so far, everything has stayed the same. Apparently, it’s sort of common to have chronic swollen lymph nodes for a variety of reasons – I’ve had mononucleosis and Strep B, and both of those can contribute to someone having lifelong lymph node swelling.

But, here we go, off today to check this out once again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous or anxious. I am. I’ve written before about how I tend toward the darker side of thinking realistically, so obviously, the thought of getting bad news today is weighing on me.

I hate to leave this on a bad note, but I needed to do a blog post today, and this was on my mind. I’ll make sure to update the post later today when I get back home.

But isn’t it just like my wife to mention yesterday that this was sort of like a date? She has this habit of labeling any time we’re not with the kids as a date, even when I sliced the top of my finger a few years ago and cut a tendon. 

She had to drive me to urgent care to get it stitched up.  Only Liz. But I guess when you have four kids, you look for "date nights" wherever you can find them.

For the sake of this post, I'll post results when I get back!

UPDATE:

So I went and got my CT Scan. Unfortunately, the results weren't what I would've wished for. They found 1 or 2 lymph nodes that are bigger than what they were. The nodes are intertwined with my intestines so he couldn't just grab a biopsy with a needle. The doctor gave me an antibiotic to see if that would cure the swollen nodes. I go back in 4 weeks. If the nodes are still swollen, then I will have to have surgery to remove them. Keep praying!