I am 21 years old and waiting to find out if I have cancer. It's the worse feeling in the world. I go from happy to sad in 60 seconds. One word can set me off.
Now I'll tell you my never ending battle.
A year ago I got really sick. I was put on antibiotics and steroids. A few days later I was feeling great. The symptoms of my URI ( upper respiratory infection) were going away and I was feeling great. Until I noticed my mouth swelling up. It was so swollen I could hardly talk. I figured it was just a fluke thing since the next day when I woke up it had disappeared. My neck hurt though, pretty bad too I could hardly move it. On and off for the next week I started getting weird symptoms, my neck would swell and become so painful I couldn't move it, my face would swell, my mouth would swell up, my throat would feel like it was closing up. So back to the doctor I went. Diagnosed with a lymph node infection and sent home with more stronger antibiotics. Also the doctor wanted me to have blood test. I did that and the test showed nothing my white count was a little high but I had just gotten over a major infection. Nothing alarmed my doctor at that point. 2 weeks later I was back in the office and nothing had changed, so I was sent for a cat-scan. The cat-scan showed a major infection. Another Strong course of antibiotics and I was supposed to be healed. Well I wasn't so off to the ENT (ear nose and throat doctor) I went. He was concerned I might have cancer, in fact his exact words were "Well it's either just an infection or...." "Cancer" was my reply "yes" was his. So after a year of watching and waiting here were are to the current month...(may 2007).

My life has been a mess. I've moved 2 times, had 2 surgery's and now I'm preparing for a 3rd. My ENT is great. He got me in within a week of symptoms worsting. Ran about 2000 dollars worth of tests trying to come up with another answer to no avail. So he scheduled my surgery for June 1st. I am having a lymph node in my neck/collarbone area taken out and biopsied. The waiting is hell. It's like my life has been placed on pause for 2 weeks waiting for this answer. Do I have cancer or not? You just want to scream and cry to God. But there are good points I have learned a lot about cancer and found out that the cancer there looking for is the most treatable in the list of cancers. So my waiting continues until sometime in June when the results come back. I'm scared, I won't lie. But I know there's always hope. A part of me is happy though to know I am not crazy and that someone believes me that something isn't right with my body. Hopefully I will finally know what.

To be continued......

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