Well...wth?

ok, well I started this post three times, and then erased it. I have no idea what to say. I should probably just delete now.

........2  hours later....

I would like to start the entire day over, thank you very much. I just went to the doctor to rule some things out. That's all. I should know my track history with that is not very good.

Good grief...no clue what to say. It has been a long day.

.......30 minutes later.......

A few months ago, I would guess October or so, I started having some trouble swallowing. It felt like there was a lump in my throat, and food was getting stuck right there. It caused me to clear my throat constantly. I really didn't have time to do anything about it. I was getting ready to travel to get Axel and all the preparations that come with that.

After Axel and I came home I went to my ENT. He looked down my throat with a scope and from there couldn't see anything, and my vocal chords looked fine. The most common cause for chronic throat clearing is reflux, so he put me on Prevacid. I took that for 6 weeks, and there wasn't any change.

The throat clearing got better for awhile. "Better" being not "constant".

In May when I went back to Serbia, it was starting to bother me again. Worse this time. Sometimes when I ate, it hurt to swallow as food moved past what I felt was a lump. My friends in Serbia made comments about the throat clearing, which was now constant. Yeah yeah yeah...I'll get it looked at.

Then on Sunday, I was in the shower washing my face when a spot on my nose started bleeding....and bleeding and bleeding. Ok FINE, it's time to go in.

Today was the day, and the spot on my nose was still bleeding. What was on my nose appears to be Basal Cell Carcinoma. The plastic surgeon happened to be in today, so he removed it and sent it off to pathology. He's pretty sure, based on how it looked, that it was Basal cell. If there's a skin cancer to want, it's Basal Cell. My dad has Malignant Melanoma, and I'm glad that's not what's on my nose. Basal cell = remove it and move on.

My throat, on the other hand, is another story. I had already diagnosed myself with something related to my thyroid. It's easy to treat, and in the grand scheme of things not that big of a deal. Even if it was thyroid cancer, I could handle that.

The doctor felt all over my neck, commenting on the very large lymph node under my jaw. She did not feel any nodules in my thyroid, and it was of normal size. She had me swallow water, and as I did she could feel the lump I was feeling. In fact, if she put any pressure at all there while I was swallowing, it REALLY hurt to swallow. The lump didn't hurt, the swallowing did. She called another doctor in, and he felt it as well. They agreed, there is a lump, and it feels as if it's inside my esophagus. Now they're scheduling me for an endoscopy so it can be looked at, and a biopsy taken. By the way, they did a thyroid panel, and those results were just posted to my online chart, and my thyroid levels are well within normal limits.

Google is not my friend right now. In fact, I'm just going to stay away from it all together for a bit.

I do know that I don't have any of the "high risk behaviors" usually associated with things like....esophageal cancer. I don't smoke, I rarely drink, I don't chew tobacco, and as far as I know I don't have reflux.  I am about 30 lbs over weight, and my diet basically sucks. I also know that all of that doesn't really matter. A person can have no risk factors and still develop esophageal cancer.

I begged them to tell the GI doctor to put me all the way to sleep for the endoscopy. I don't want to remember it, and I don't want to hear stuff. I also don't want to feel the scope shoved down my throat. I'm a big baby, I know.

I will not lie. This pretty much freaked me out today, along with a couple other factors I haven't mentioned here.  Axel and I went to the grocery store and I wandered around there three times and still couldn't figure out what I needed to get. Ok, well that happens a lot, but this was worse than normal, I think.