Continuous pain months after lung surgery

cabbott said:

They do CAT scans on me every 3-4 months, so I don't have to worry (except maybe about glowing in the dark from all that radioactivity!!!). I dislike exposing my body to all that stuff, but it sounds like you would appreciate the chance to check things out. Why don't you ask if the test, at least for the first year, be every 4 months? Or see how much it would be to pay for a CAT scan out of pocket? It might not be as much as you fear and it might help you sleep better. I still have coughing after almost a year though no cancer. I take a bit of vitamin C (down to two pills a day now) to dry up things and make me cough a bit less. The over the counter drugs just made me woozy. Ibruprofen helps with soreness from time to time. As for when cancer reoccurs, I hope it never does!! I have stage 1 and there is a good chance I won't have to deal with more surgery. If it does come back, I can lose up to 1 lung without problems, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. Different cancers have different levels of aggressiveness. Mine is supposed to be rather laid back but has the draw back of sometimes reappearing in the other lung. You can look up what is in the path report and find out what the general "personality" of your cancer is on the internet. But remember, what you have is very specific. The internet and your doctor cannot tell you about your particular cancer, only about what most people with that kind of cancer experienced. A pulmonary specialist might be a useful person to check over your tests. You might have no cancer but still have a problem that is treatable if diagnosed. Good luck!

Thanks for answering Cabbott. I recently saw my doctor and he went ahead and had an xray done on me. I get another CT scan in August, which is in about 8 weeks, so I think I can tough it out until then. I went and saw my internist Friday about my concerns and he seemed to think my fears were nothing to worry about. He told me to try and quit worrying so much, that he had every confidence in the world that the cancer would not come back. I had adenocarcinoma, the slow moving cancer. It was a little over three years from the time the nodule appeared until the time it started growing and they did surgery, so it wasn't a very aggressive type of cancer. When I see my doctor the next time I will ask if it's possible to have a CT scan done every 4 months. I think that would make me feel a lot better. As far as coughing, I have had about 3 coughing spells since my surgery. That scared me for I didn't know if it was normal or not, but after you mentioned your coughing spells I felt better. It was like a bad tickle in my throat that just wouldn't go away. I already have a pulmonary specialist keeping an eye on me and he's the one who suggested CT scans every 6 months, so neither he nor my internist feels it's important to get tested any sooner than that. But you know as well as I do what it's like to go through something like this. Every little symptom makes you worry about the cancer being back again. I just had bloodwork done and all of the results were normal. That's a great sign because when I had cancer, all of my bloodwork was abnormal. I just needed someone to let me know that I'm not losing my mind worrying needlessly. Thanks again and good luck to you also!!