Hey, wha happen?

For those of you who are unaware of the back story, this one goes out to you. Tim has had a cough since around March or April of this year. He had complained about it occasionally, but mostly just to say that he was getting older (29 is ancient, right?) and could no longer complete tasks he could easily do in his dashing youth. I kept nagging at him to go to the doctor and finally one Sunday he agreed because he was getting out of breath. The following morning I made an appointment for Tuesday, July 28. Fast forward to doc's office.

Our gp (general practitioner), Dr. B., was very nice when we came in, but it was clear that he did not think it anything serious, so I was feeling relieved and I think Tim was as well. He sent us down for a chest x-ray just to be safe (shout out to Dr. B on that one!) and T went in to get one. He came out about 20 minutes later and said we could go, but the radiologist suddenly came out after us and informed us that we needed to go up to Dr. B's office again. Scary. We followed her up and sat in the waiting room for her to show Dr. B.

2 years later (or 5 minutes, who can tell?), the gp came and took us into his office. He showed us the x-ray and pointed out a mass in Tim's chest on the right side, just above and next to his heart. He told us it looked like lymphoma and it was serious. We were to go downstairs again and see if we could get in for a CAT scan ASAP. Downstairs we went.

We came back two hours later for the chest CAT scan, the following day for bloodwork. I left for vacation (perfect timing, right?) and Tim's close friend took him to the biopsy of his chest on Friday. We got a definite 'yes' on lymphoma from the gp on the following Monday and went in for a PET scan on Thursday. The next Monday was another CAT scan, this one of his pelvic area, and we went to see the oncologist, or cancer specialist, on Wednesday, August 12. Enter Dr. G...cancer has officially been diagnosed.