On January 25, I had an appointment with a doctor at Chest, Infectious Diseases, & Critical Care. This particular appointment represented the third doctor I had seen and the fifth or sixth visit to a medical facility in the previous two months.
In addition to ordering nearly a dozen blood tests and a urine analysis, the doctor had me undergo a routine chest X-ray. After giving the blood and providing the urine, I headed down the hall to radiology and I was in and out of the X-ray room in five minutes.
Two days later, while preparing to give a presentation to a small group of church leaders in northeast Iowa, I received a phone call. The fellow on the phone coolly informed me that the X-ray had some "abnormalities" and that to get a more detailed picture, they would need to do a CT scan. If you read the comprehensive first post, you know the rest.
When we got around to meeting with our oncologist, I asked if it was possible to obtain copies of the images from my X-ray and CT scan and was delighted when he requested a CD for me.
Below you'll find the image from the infamous X-ray, but first I'd like to show you what a normal chest X-ray looks like.
This image, courtesy of , shows what a normal, healthy chest looks like when it is X-rayed. The heart is clearly visible, with the majority of its mass on the right side of the image (left side of the body). Its also interesting to see the bronchioles, which are tree-branch-like structures in the lungs.
This is the X-ray that was taken of my chest on January 25. Compared to the first image, it is not difficult to understand why the doctor was concerned. All of the structures and organs from the first image are present, but you can also clearly see the sizable mass above my heart and behind my sternum.
I share this mostly because I think it's fascinating not only to connect an actual image with a memory — on the phone hearing about vague "abnormalities" — but also because I'm still amazed that technology allows me to see an image of the inside of my body. And I'm grateful for the doctor who ordered this test, because it set things swiftly in motion and allowed us to catch the cancer relatively early.
I also have the images from my CT and PET scans. In case you missed it, the CT scan is explained by my cardiothoracic surgeon in . I'm hesitant to post the images from the PET scan because based on our conversation with the radiation oncologist yesterday, it may look worse than it actually is (he mentioned something about them giving me too much radioactive fluid intravenously). So I'll hold off on posting the PET scan until we understand more about it.
