I have been telling this story to people for about a month and a half now. I should have written it down ages ago and saved my precious breath.
The first difference I noticed was being short of breath around the beginning of March. I just thought it was my asthma coming back from when I was a kid. It progressively got worse as time went on. My shoulders started hurting really bad as time passed and my breath got shorter. I thought this was a result of working out and hurting my rotator cuff, and my old lacrosse injuries. Little did I know I was way wrong. I had a headache on May 10th; it was a different kind of headache. I had never felt anything like that before. It kept me up all night so I called in sick on the 11th. The headache kept coming back for the next few days. But the headaches were only at night. I was a bit concerned so I went to the ER at about 3 :00 A.M. on May 13th. The doctors did a work up on me and did a scan of my head. They couldn’t find anything outstanding that was wrong with me so they gave me some Percocet and sent me packing. The next couple days the headaches seemed to be getting better. But on Monday May 17th the headache came back full force. Luckily it hit me early enough that I was able to get a few hours of sleep that night and I went to work on Saturday the 18th. Tuesday was the worst night so far. I had such a bad headache I couldn’t open my eyes, and I could barley move. It took me until about 2:00 on Wednesday afternoon to get over that headache. I went home Wednesday night and tried to go to bed, as I was laying there trying to sleep I kept feeling myself stop breathing. I had to sit myself up open my eyes and make an effort to keep breathing. This was very concerning to me so I called my dad to come get me and take me to the hospital again. About 1:00 A.M. on May 20th we left to go to the ER again. Luckily it was the same doctors that were there the week before. My symptoms were way worse at this point. I could barley walk up the stairs without having to stop and catch my breath, and I could hardly swallow food or a pill. So the doctors ordered a scan of my chest. It wasn’t long after the scan that doctor Stroud came into my room and told me I have an impressive mass in my chest. 13 cm x 11 cm x 9 cm were the measurements that they gave me. The mass is sitting right on top of my heart. It surrounds my trachea, esophagus, aorta, and all of my other vital vessels. I was admitted to the University Hospital, then over to Huntsman Cancer Hospital. I was going through my first round of chemo within 24 hours of being diagnosed.
