A different kind of whirlwind.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

They look so innocuous in the morning, these clouds. At this time of year (albeit early this year), they're dangerous by day's end.

Yesterday was no exception. And by that I refer to clouds in more ways than one.

On a day when the experts predicted virtually no chance of rain, we got a very slushy rain driven on hard, high, rotating winds. A different kind of whirlwind has upended my life in other ways.

My pain levels are out of control lately, all over. That's not new, even if it is unwelcome. But I was also having a noticeable amount of pain in the front of my neck yesterday. That's been ongoing intermittently for many long months, and I've lately assumed it's just the tumor (made worse for a while by all the needles that were stuck in it). Yesterday, I attributed it to having slept wrong, because I awakened to find once again that the back of my neck was a mess (from that old injury that has bedeviled me and my sleep for decades). 

But last night, I discovered that a new lump has emerged on the front of my throat. This one is in a different place, close enough to be connected to the other areas, but on the other side; I mean, it's a fairly small space we're talking about here anyway. It wasn't there yesterday morning (or anytime prior); like the first one, that manifested apparently in conjunction with my first near-death episode on 11/10/17, it just . . . appeared, as though out of nowhere, at the end of the day. Yes, I keep close tabs on such things now. [No, it's not my imagination; Wings has confirmed that.] And now, I don't know what to think. I mean, the primary reason I felt so confident in the second pathologist's analysis and the surgeon's assessment thereof lay mostly in the fact that, in all the weeks between the two biopsies, the tumor (they said) had not grown so much as a millimeter.

This is a big change.

In a very short period of time.

I have a doctor's appointment next week, just a pain-management follow-up, but I'll notify her of it then. Meanwhile . . . well, it's not as though there's anything I can do about it in the interim. Except worry. Except be afraid, a fear I had thought I could finally consign to the dustbin. 

Maybe it's nothing.

Maybe I'm not cancer-free after all.

But I hate having to go back to living with this kind of fear.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.