Draft written by Shannon, posted by her mom, Gretchen.
I went in for my second follow up CT scan this morning to track the little something in my lung. It first popped up in the July yearly scan, then in the follow up one I had in September (?) to see if it had grown (and therefore might be of concern), it looked like it *might* have gone from 4mm to 5mm. However, this discrepancy could have been because of measurement error, the way I was breathing, or any number of other things.
I haven’t been overly concerned, honestly, although I also haven’t been unconcerned. The biggest weird thing for me has been that my asthma has been acting up quite a bit lately, which just generally makes me more concerned because they always ask about “shortness of breath” as a possible sign of recurrence. That said, my oncologist hasn’t seemed to worried about this, since my symptoms always go away with my inhaler. I think/hope that it’s just my childhood asthma coming back and needing to get under control again.
Something that made me feel a lot better was Googling the symptoms of lung cancer (since I keep trying different Google combinations to see if my asthma exacerbation could be caused by something actually in my lungs, like cancer, but nothing ever comes up). Granted, these are the signs of actual lung cancer, not melanoma recurrence in the lungs, but still, I would imagine “crap in lungs” might cause similar symptoms. The main sign was a persistent cough, by more than 70% of people. I have seen neither hide nor hair of a cough, so that’s good. “Shortness of breath” (what I DO have) is around 20%. I’m taking those as good signs, even though I have absolutely no medically-informed reason to do so.
So I was feeeling