Feeling Great to Feeling Not So Great

For the past month or so I've been dealing with some "stuff." It's not out of the ordinary that "stuff" pops up and cranks the worry-meter up a bit. And it's not out of the ordinary that it passes and it's quickly forgotten about.

First my Dad was getting dizzy spells. He was diagnosed with an inner ear infection and given a prescription. Then a couple weeks later I started having dizzy spells.

Then Alyssa had an enlarged lymph node high on the back of her neck. Then a few days later I developed an enlarged lymph node low on the back of my neck.

I've been stiff and sore all over with especially sharp pains in my right shoulder. I've been doing a lot of Spring cleaning, and lifting and stretching, but it doesn't feel like a physical type injury.

If I had to describe the shoulder pain I would have to describe it more like arthritis, with some weird connection to my stomach, since if I cough or sneeze or burp it makes my shoulder feel like a sharp knife is being plunged deep.

Sunday I felt great. My energy was good. I felt like skipping and jumping around.

Monday couldn't have been more different. Now the weather on Monday was awful, raining all day and in the 40s for a high. It was the kind of weather that would make arthritis work up.

But how does that explain the enlarged lymph node?

I just seem to have these strange little nuicances that may or may not be related to one another.

So we called the oncologist yesterday. He told me to come on in at 8:30 a.m. this morning.

We head out early and were glad to see we were his first appointment of the day (no waiting). In general I was feeling a whole lot better than the day before. He said it could be a viral thing, it could be a cancer thing, flip a coin, but we should try to find out. He sent me for an x-ray of my shoulder, and since the x-ray department was just down the hall we had it done right away. We should have the results tomorrow.

In general, whenever the oncologist hears about an enlarged lymph node he is almost obliged to follow through on it with scans.

But I do feel that this is probably a viral thing, mixed in with an arthritis flare-up. The plan is to go ahead with the May 22nd appointment in Philly with the surgeon. My oncologist told us he would be scheduling scans regardless, probably a PET scan, where they inject radioactive sugar into me to track and find cancer areas.

I didn't get any finite answers to all these aches and pains and swollen nodes. But the process has begun. And we'll see what tomorrow has in store for me.