'This will only hurt a little bit'

Tami, one of my high school friends, was in the area today, and she spent part of the day with me. She came with me when I got my lung biopsy, and kept me supplied with tissues while I coughed up blood for about an hour afterwards.

This was a biopsy guided by CAT-Scan. The handsome doctor, who looked not much older than 20 (why do they keep getting younger?) said it would not hurt. Ha. It was like a bone marrow biopsy only not at the base of your spine but in your chest.

He also said I would need to return for an x-ray in about two hours, because he might poke some holes that were a little too big, leading to a collapsed lung. “Maybe you could try not to do that,” I said. He assured me that he would do his best and said that if the lung did collapse, they would put in a chest tube. Okkkkaaaaay.

He numbed several areas of skin on my chest and then went in to get samples of what appears to be a pretty large mass on my right lung. I didn’t look at everything he was using, but I saw him use a needle for an aspirate. He stuck some other probes in and wiggled them while I lay in the machine, apparently so he could get the exact spot. I couldn’t even do relaxing breathing, because he had warned me that at any time he might need to say, “hold your breath.” If I was at a nice cleansing outbreath, there wasn’t much left to hold.

In any case, I survived, though the next hour was difficult with the coughing up of blood. The blood finally stopped, but hours later I am still having trouble breathing. It’s nothing terrible, and it is worse when I’m on the phone, so I tried stay off the phone tonight.

The biopsy is supposed to show exactly what is causing the pneumonia. Hopefully something will grow in a few days so they can target it with the right antibiotic or antifungal.

Tami (known as Tamar to her friends from adulthood) had breezed in this morning with a smile, only to be met by Ms. Doom and Gloom. I muttered about death, finding that actually saying some of my thoughts out loud took some of the power away from them.

Tami then used her no-nonsense, I-mean-business Tami voice.

“I’m sick and tired of the D-word,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

OK, OK, OK!

It was great spending the day with her. I think she may have given me a jump-start.