The waiting game

Well that was a long, boring weekend.
 
I found out on Friday that Lump 3 actually appears to be Lump Jr, and is likely an offshoot of one of my original lumps. They’re pretty sure the source is some sort of mycobacterium, but they need to biopsy everything to know for certain. Unfortunately Lump Jr is deeper than the initial, more superficial lumps, so now we need to consult with plastic surgery. And of course they had already peaced out for the holiday weekend by Friday.
 
I actually had the option of going home on Friday and pursuing this as an outpatient, but we had some concerns. For one thing, if anything went wrong I’d be back in the ER, and I already went to the ER twice last week. Aside from not wanting to spend hours waiting again, I definitely didn’t want yet anther exposure to the crowded, germ ridden ER waiting room. Also, being inpatient makes my case a higher priority and gets things done faster than doing it outpatient. And finally, Covid cases are ramping up and hospital beds are in short supply. My doctor was worried that they’d have trouble getting me in if I needed to come back – or worse, that outpatient procedures might start getting canceled.
 
So I made the difficult decision to stay here and just twiddle my thumbs all. Weekend. Long. I did petition to NOT be woken up for vital signs at 4am, and not to have labwork at 5am EVERY morning, and to get my IV out and preserve my precious veins since I’m not getting any infusions yet. And they actually agreed! Spending extra days in the hospital was annoying, but thankfully not too painful.
 
Today I should be meeting with plastic surgery to figure out when they’ll open me up, clean out these lumps, and find out what’s causing them. Depending on how that goes, follow up treatment could be super easy or REALLY hard. Best case scenario they can easily clean everything out with surgery and I don’t need any further treatment. Second best case scenario, it’s an easy infection that can be treated with oral antibiotics. More difficult scenario is a more difficult infection that requires a few months of IV antibiotics. And the worst case scenario is a complicated infection that could require a full year of IV antibiotics.
 
I’m obviously hoping for option 1 or 2, but I think 3 is most likely because that’s an infection I used to have in my lungs that could have escaped into my chest during transplant. But we really have no clue until they do surgery and biopsy everything. Hopefully now that the holiday weekend is finally over we can get the ball rolling and get things taken care of SOON!