I'm home from hospital with excellent news. Although the scans I had suggested a high probability of metastatic cancer, the frozen section that was carried out during surgery suggested a near certainty that the nodule was not malignant! How fantastic is that?
Consequently the surgeon only had to remove a very small piece of my lung, rather than the full lobe. Unfortunately he was unable to get at it via keyhole surgery so I still have a full thoracotomy, complete with broken rib, to recover from, but there's no noticeable reduction in my lung function and I have a good supply of painkillers to get me through the worst of it. I won't know for a few weeks what the nodule actually was, but at least I know there won't be any unpleasant chemotherapy to come.
Compared to some of the other poor souls on the ward I felt like a real fraudster but they were unstintingly generous in their pleasure at my good news.
So... off to play today's games.
