TAKE ANOTHER LITTLE CHUNK OF MY LUNG - OCALA, AUGUST 2024
I arrived in Ocala, Florida at 1 am on Sunday, August 4th after 10 hours of travel. By 6 am, mom and I were in the emergency room for a horrible rash on her chest. It was cellulitis and treatable with antibiotics and steroids, but it looked like the plague.
I came to town to get the results of her lung biopsy and PET scan taken on August 1st. By Monday the 5th we had the results and they were mixed. Biopsy was negative for malignancy but her lymph nodes looked suspicious, the mass/spot on her right lung was larger than the last scan, and we needed to see a thoracic surgeon.
We saw the surgeon on August 13th. Right away he said he would take out part of her lung (1/3 right lower lung lobectomy) and her lymph nodes. He was treating it as cancer. Did we have any questions? Um. Just a few…thousand. He ordered some additional tests, but they could not be scheduled for another 10 days!
I changed my flight and I stayed. We told close family members and friends what was happening. It looked like cancer and a big surgery with a hard recovery. We cried, but we also went to the pool. We made funny videos. We drank some wine, but not enough. We tried to keep it light and positive. I kept working 8 to 10 hours per day.
We got a second opinion and it was weird. He said my mom was aspirating on food, the food was trapped in her lungs, and it caused an infection that looks like a mass on a CT scan. What? Mom, are you chewing your food? Jesus.
My mom’s husband (not my dad) is in a nursing home, so we also visited him. He has Parkinson’s and dementia and we did not tell him about my mom’s lung. He cannot walk and he moves between the bed and a wheelchair with the help of a machine. But if something happened to my mom, who would ever visit him again? Me?
The additional CT scan and EKG occurred on August 23rd. Then we had to wait the whole weekend and Monday before we could see the thoracic surgeon on Tuesday for the results and the surgery plan. We were nervous, tense, sad, angry, and tired.
We went to the surgeon’s office at 10:30 am on Tuesday the 27th. It was a brand new office and we were the first patients. A hollow victory. The nurse took my mom’s vitals and then asked a series of odd questions. The last question was “Do you have peace in your life?” No, we do not.
The surgeon came in and he said, “Well the good news is that the mass shrank. It is smaller and I do not think it is worth trying to take it out right now. Come back in 3 months for another CT scan.” The possible cancer, the lymph nodes, everything is fine now? He said he still wants to monitor it, but it might be just an infection. Maybe the medicine from the skin rash helped…he does not know; we do not know. Maybe the second opinion was right after all. The surgeon quipped that we took away his fun. The fun of ripping my mom's lung out of her chest.
We went to a "restaurant" called Cody’s to have 2 for 1 wine and appetizers to celebrate! We laughed, we cried, and we texted everyone the good news! I told her how sad I will be when she does eventually pass away. She said it will be hard, but I will be okay. She will be at peace.
Then she said, “Maybe the grief will make you lose weight.”
As I took a bite of my giant onion ring, I thought how the diet-industrial complex will never let my Boomer mom go - not even in death - and it won’t let me go either. You can never be too rich or too thin. You can, one day, be too dead, but not today.
NATALIE NIMERALA