I have had a very trying week.   I am very thankful that Brooke is a doctor and she treated my situation with a keen sense of urgency!    It all started about two weeks ago when I woke up one morning in some pain in the left side of my back.   I dismissed it as a reminder that I was out of shape, as I have started training again on the bike.    I had some good rides and some rides that hurt way too much for the effort.    The pain seemed to get worse at night, and it reached its peak when I awoke Sunday night screaming in pain and drenched in sweat.  The pain was sharp and I thought that it had to be a kidney stone, even though I have never experienced a kidney stone before.  I also thought maybe my liver had finally given up, but Brooke informed me that my liver is located on the right side (phew).    Given my past medical history, I was tired of worrying about what could be going on inside my body, so  we were off to the hospital for a chest xray and blood work.  One good thing about a small town is that we were able to get in and out of the hospital in about 1 hr.    We went to Brooke’s office to read the xray and lab work.   Brooke pulled the xray up on the computer and that’s when my week got worse…   She immediately said that the left side looked concerning!    I started to freak out and all I wanted was someone to fix me and tell me I was ok.    I took a pic of the xrays and emailed them to my cycling Doctor Andy, and he immediately called me and said that the left side did not look normal?  Both Brooke and Andy used some big words to describe what was wrong, but all I wanted to know was, was it CANCER!?   It took some time to get the official read on the xray, and the good new was it was not CANCER, but there was a problem.

That was Monday.    Since Monday I have had:

5 chest xrays

5 doctor office visits

3 trips to the hospital

1 CT scan of my chest

300 cc of fluid drained from around my left lung

Brooke was been taking care of me and following up on all my labs and test results.   We have had a very interesting experience with how different doctors practice and we are now well versed in the Insurance game.   Basically you can be dying as you wait for a pre-authorization from insurance.    We now have every one on the same page and I am again on the road to recovery.

I have some form of pneumonia…we probably will never know the exact cause of that.  The pneumonia is causing inflammation and fluid to build up in my left side in the area between the chest wall and the lungs. They drained that fluid (see picture above of the thoracentesis!) and have tested it and all the results point to an infection.   So I am on some high dose antibiotics and rest.    My lung capacity is compromised and could take several weeks to get back to normal.   I have been feeling about the same, not worse, since starting my antibiotics.   I am hoping that today I turn the corner!

Thanks to Brooke and all her partners for helping fix me!

Its been a long week!, originally uploaded by ronswilliams123.