Dan Murphy
We are family.
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2000
- Messages
- 83,725
Terrible!So - I appreciated your words and wanted to check back in because I feel so, so despondent, really.
MRI results said, in part, there's a mediastinal mass (which had been clocked before) that is probably a thymic cyst (the other "in part" is that there are a handful of lesions/cysts on my liver and a kidney but nothing super worrisome). So I says to my dr, I says, "What are we going to do about it?" And his response was, "Nothing. Why would we do anything?" So - a 100 times over, when I've looked up information about any of those terms (thymic cyst and/or anterior mediastinum mass), I've seen that often those are removed even if asymptomatic (but if symptomatic, almost always removed because it can lead to more problems). So I said some version of "because I've been having these problems" and the dr told me that my symptoms - coughing up blood/blood in my sputum (since September), chest pain, shortness of breath, a partially collapsed lung since August amidst other things - were not symptoms of this. But I should schedule a generic 3 month follow-up with him and keep an eye on my mental health.
Mostly right now, I'm writing because the constant, high-pitched wheezing that I've had since last fall (which didn't exist before last fall) is bothering me. I'm just sitting here. I've not exerted myself, really (though - to be fair - I am impressed at my stamina ... most days, I feel super fatigued after about 2-4 hours of being awake but today, I managed to not feel exhausted and need to sleep. Granted, I did almost nothing except exist on my couch - but I did not have to sleep the 16 hours a day I've been sleeping lately).
My coworkers have suggested I need a second opinion ("we can see you've changed in these ways") but there are few ways to get that where I am (and especially with the lack of energy I have). Before the MRI, I had a ton of blood work done (in part because I keep producing blood in other body fluids) and the dr was like, "You keep testing positive in this ANA test but you don't have any autoimmune problems" but then just leaves it there - and like all of my symptoms, there's no curiosity about the second step of any test. It's just "Oh, you shouldn't be bleeding, having symptoms, testing positive" but then when I ask if we can figure out the root ... it feels like there's no follow-up. I don't know what else to do.
Just wondering is your health insurance an HMO. It seems there's a disincentive to pursue things in HMO's with the capita concept of payment to the medical people.
As Kim asked above, why no 2nd opinion?