1) Probably go back to two weeks. My hands and legs are getting puffy again, and I am seeing more spots on my hands. (Though it hasn't hurt my tennis game because I played well this week and even had an ace.)
2) In the absence of a diagnosis, my overactive mind has been filling in the void with everything from a flesh-eating bacteria to some mysterious cancer that will be the one to do me in, a sneaky thing as I was being vigilant against leukemia.
Picture me on my fainting couch, like Blanche Dubois saying, "You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape one day out on the ocean."
I admittedly have an over-active imagination, exacerbated by a dose of PTSD, but the bacteria idea didn't come out of nowhere. A few days after my biopsy last Friday, I got a call from a doctor covering for Dr. Yang (the one who did the biopsy.) He asked if it was getting larger, to which I said no. He told me preliminary reports show a kind of bacteria that usually shows up in the throat but not on the skin, and that I should keep applying the antibacterial ointment until we get the results.
The spot burns on and off. Sometimes it's very painful.
My internist wouldn't play the reassurance game when I went to see him for a medication matter. "It's been there for so long, it's not going to do me in, right?"
A nice answer would have been "probably not."
Instead, he said, "Let's just wait for the biopsy."
I paged Melissa, who knows the drill.
I said the uncertainty was making me a little crazy, and she said she understood and said she would keep on top of it. Hopefully it will be settled today.
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