DIAGNOSIS

DIAGNOSIS

On December 20, 2011 I was told by my doctor to go to Maimonides and ask to be seen by Dr. A, neurologist, in the ER as I may become paralyzed because of a compressed vertebrae (finally seen on a scan after months of pains in my arms, back and abdomen and tests trying to discover what was wrong).  My dad drove me and offered to stay with me but I asked him to go on home knowing that Eddie, my husband, was on his way to the hospital.  My dad would pick up Thomas, my 8 year-old son.  

I was sent to the back corner of the ER and was given a urine cup.  I decided to go to the bathroom to fill the cup when a nurse waved me over to a bed in the main ER area.  This got me worried. I felt that perhaps I was not such a serious case when I was in a dark corner sitting on a bench. It was harder to feel this way when I was moved to a bed. The good part of being in the hospital bed was that the angle of the bed relieved the pain in my back. Eddie arrived and so did an ER intern who thumped me quite hard on the back to see if I had any pain.  I did.  She wanted to know why I was there.  I explained about the scan. I told her that I had thought I had injured my back when sleeping on a cot for an overnight birthday party for my son at the Museum of Natural History.  The ER doctor joined us and in perfect Dr. Seuss terms, he indicated that this was not possible—“A cot, absolutely not.  Next, the neuorlogist's interns examined me and I was moved upstairs for further scanning.  Later that evening, I was thoroughly scanned. I was in pain again from lying flat on the MRI and other machines but once I had a chance to lie in the hospital bed, I experienced relief again.  

The next morning, the neurologist, Dr. A, met with me and indicated he could do emergency surgery that morning.  I agreed.  Eddie came just before I went into surgery.  I was quite dopey for most of the day and it was only when the anesthesia had finally worn off that I used my blackberry to research what was happening to me.  At about 2:30 in the morning, I thought I must have cancer.  I waited till the next morning to call Eddie and asked, “Do you know something I don’t?”  He asked me the same thing.  He then told me that the doctor had come out of surgery and told him that the spinal surgery had went really well and that we would deal with the cancer later.  This is how he learned I had cancer.  The doctor told him that he had told me but all I remembered is that he had spoken of a tumor on my spine.  To me,, a tumor could be benign so I hadn’t even thought of cancer before the surgery.

When I was discharged from the hospital, Eddie and I went to have a follow-up mammogram and sonogram -- 8 months after I had normal results--and back to Dr. P to learn I had Metastatic Breast Cancer.  In four days, I went from having back pains, to having a tumor on my spine, to having cancer, to having stage iv cancer.