Check Yo Self... No Really, Actually Check

I hope everybody had a great weekend!  Did anybody else just I love "Nanny McPhee Returns"?  Obviously I'm kidding, but I did get a chance to see The Yacht Rock Revue play Michael Jackson's "Thriller" from cover to cover.  So with that in mind, what is your favorite Michael Jackson song?  Mine without a doubt is "Wanna Be Starting Something". 

Big week coming up, but I will go into details more as each appointment draws near.  Tomorrow morning I am scheduled to have a heart echo.  This is in order to give the chemo team a good baseline understanding into how healthy my heart is so they know exactly what dose of one of the chemo drugs I should receive.  Apparently one of the drugs that is used in such cases can put a bit of strain on the heart, so they need to know what they are dealing with before they concoct my recipe.  I am also having a quick surgical procedure on Wednesday which I will discuss in more detail later this week, sorry to leave you all hanging, I know you can't take the suspense ;).

What I'd like to focus on this evening is detection.  I was reading my sarcoma handbook (a real page turner), and it talked about how it is difficult to detect sarcomas early, because they lack symptoms and people are often prone to ignoring lumps.  With that being said, here is how detection transpired in my case:

I went to Nashville for a visit Friday July 9th.  I showered Sunday morning in Nashville and had no signs of anything on my body.  When I got home that evening, about 5 hours later, I was changing clothes, and I immediately noticed a fist sized lump on my upper right thigh, just below the groin.  No pain or discomfort accompanied this lump, but I knew it wasn't normal.  Honestly, I thought (after an extensive WebMD search) it was a hernia, as I had one on my right side when I was a young child.  Either way, I knew something was up(definitely wasn't thinking cancer), so I went to the local "Doc in a box" that evening.  And this started the chain of events that lead up to my official diagnosis on Tuesday August 9th.

On the other hand you have Lance Armstrong, who was in complete denial and didn't go in to get diagnosed until he was extremely sick and the disease had spread.  Compared to him I was much more proactive, so hopefully that will make a difference in my treatment and recovery chances (had I waited a month, what would the CT have looked like?).

So what I am getting at, is you need to know your body, and if something doesn't look right, even if it doesn't hurt, there is no shame in getting it checked out.  Nobody is going to think you are a hypochondriac if you are unsure about something and want an expert opinion.  This isn't meant to scare anybody, but I think as young healthy people we really don't like going to the doctor, paying the deductible, and getting "redundant" testing, but you just never know when you could be saving your own life by being cautious.  One of the most humbling aspects of this situation is you realize that you aren't "invincible".  Now I am not saying that I(we) go around treating our bodies like Steve-O from "Jackass", but we definitely take our good health and youth for granted.  So in the future, no in the present, please do something to get to know your body just a little bit better, and don't be afraid to go to a doctor, and when you are there, don't be afraid to ask questions.  Remember that GPs are a jack of all trades, master of none, so their word isn't and shouldn't be the end all be all.  This is not meant to be a slander towards GPs, it is just the reality of the situation; they can't know everything so don't expect them to.

Thank you everyone for the tremendous support!

Michael