The Backstory

I would like to thank Andrew James for blogging about his experience.  It has inspired me to also blog about mine.  I would also like to thank my wife LeeAnna for her encouragement in writing this and all of her love and support through this journey.  I have read a couple different blogs and usually the content focuses on dealing with the sickness, diagnosis information, and treatments.  However, there is another component to this, everything within the family unit changes, and the spouse and children are also greatly impacted by what is happening.  LeeAnna and I discussed this and liked the idea of her adding some additional insight to articles in the blog.  Her comments have been annotated with LZ.

Before diving into current events, I would like to take a look back at everything that has led up to where I am at right now….

March 31, 2017

Two days prior, I had been experiencing pain in my right testicle and it was shooting up into my lower abdomen.   I had never felt anything like it before and it was hurting bad enough that I was having to lie down to try and deal with the pain.  I started to run through a checklist of what in the world it could be, and also started to consult Google.  My initial thoughts; that I pulled something or had a hernia, and Google had other suggestions as well, none of which seemed plausible to me at the time.  I went into the local urgent care and was diagnosed with an Inguinal Hernia and referred me to a surgeon.  I was told to go to the ER if the pain got worse or if I started to run a fever.   I tried to get an appointment with the surgeon, but the surgical center I was referred to had both surgeons out on vacation, and was going to be about a week to get in.

LZ: Paul had been complaining of intermittent pain in his lower back for about a month prior to this and he thought it might have been from his recent chiropractic visits. When he complained that it moved down into his right groin area and testicle, this set off a little warning flag inside me, which I quickly brushed aside.  On one particular day he woke up in pain and it was worse than the other times so we decided that he should be seen at the local urgent care, and he came home not too surprised at his “hernia” diagnosis. I wasn’t either, I mean, it explained the pain and seemed to be a fairly low key thing so we both just accepted that as the truth.  My mind did a quick calculation…’hernia surgery? outpatient thing maybe a couple of hours, then home and rest for a few days or a week…we can handle this…’At this point in our lives we were leading very busy and productive lives- right smack in the middle of fixing up our house to place it on the market with high hopes of purchasing a new house double the size, raising 5 kids in our home with visitation every other weekend with 2 more boys which had us driving to Ohio every weekend, and both of us working full time- we had no reason to believe, no clue, that in just 1 short week, life as we knew it would be drastically turning upside down.

April 5, 2017

On this particular day, the pain was getting much worse and I was not able to continue working, or even continue the conference call I was in the middle of.  LeeAnna encouraged me to go to the ER to get checked out (If left up to me alone, I would have probably waited until I was in dire need of medical attention).  The pain continued to get worse on the way to the ER.  Thankfully my hernia diagnosis from Urgent Care put me on the fast track in the ER and they brought me right in as soon as I arrived.

I had also been seeing a chiropractor over the past 2 months and had been experiencing lower back pain on and off.  I had attributed it to my adjustments with the chiro Dr and did not believe they were related until I started to get questions about lower back pain in the ER.  I told the ER doctor I had been getting lower back pain too and explained what I thought it had been.  After some examination, and explanation from me, the Dr did not believe I had a inguinal hernia, as diagnosed.  He believed there was a good chance I had kidney stones and they ordered a cat scan to further explore the possibility.

Getting the cat scan result was a moment that changed everything in our life.  All of our current plans came to a screeching halt with this from the Dr. 

“We looked at your cat scan and did not find kidney stones, however we have found a mass in your abdomen near your right kidney and running vertically near your aorta”.

The Dr left the room and all I could do was cry and hold my wife.  My mind immediately ran to all the worst.  I watched my dad pass away from cancer at the age of 45, and I immediately felt like I was about to relive the whole experience, just from a different perspective.  A moment in time like this, has a way of quickly reordering all other priorities in life.

After letting the news settle for a bit, we decided to start letting family members know what was going on.  We did not have all the information yet, but knew we were no longer dealing with a simple hernia.  I am really glad we let everyone know, as there support and prayer have been great help.  Some things we did not think about initially;  how draining it is to repeat the same story, answer the same questions, and try to explain that I did not have the answers to a lot of the questions that were being asked of me.

We were able to get good advice from my Aunt who is a surgical nurse with many years of experience.

Ask if the hospital I am at is a teaching hospital, and if it is, make it clear that I do not want to be treated by residents(someone still in medical training)

LeeAnna and I had a brief discussion with one of the nurses in the ER and I thought we had mentioned that we did not want this, but it was not made clear enough by us, or was never noted in my chart, more on that a little later.

I was told by the Dr in the ER that I was being admitted to the hospital.  There was talk that I might have to have surgery right away, even though we had no idea what this mass was.  My care was turned over to a bariatric surgeon, Dr O.  This one was a little bit puzzling, but we believe it must have been due to him being someone who does abdominal operations and I had a mass in my abdomen.  He ordered another CAT scan.  There are 2 different types of CAT scans, one with contrast, and one without.  The one with contrast, requires that I be injected with iodine which illuminates organs and tissue to give the dr a clearer picture of what they are looking at.

After getting the results of the 2nd CAT scan, Dr O came in to provide some more information.  They believe that they were looking at a Retroperitoneal mass of lymph nodes, and there was a good possibility that I had lymphoma.  At this point, they were baffled as to why I was getting testicular pain.  They did one testicular examination after another with different Dr.’s and none of them could feel any problems.  This led to the initial conclusion that the testicular pain, and lower abdomen pain was nerve transfer pain from the abdominal mass pressing up against something.

I was admitted into the hospital, and they began to give me morphine for the pain.  They had previously given me Toradol which did not bring down my pain level.  We received an outpouring of love and help from family, friends, and from our church.  Our pastor and his wife came to visit us that night and we were able to pray together, I also got a surprise visit from my brother in law, and it was great to talk and visit with him for a while.   My wife is absolutely amazing, she managed to organize everything that needed to be done for our 5 children at home from the hospital and almost never left my side.

LZ: It was a normal morning for the most part and we both happened to be working from home when Paul began having this severe pain in his lower back, right groin, and right testicle. We drove right to the Emergency Room and got sent back to a room immediately upon our arrival due to the type of pain he was having. I am thinking ‘Oh my gosh it’s a hernia requiring emergency surgery!’ or something along those lines. And after hearing the first Doctor we saw suspecting kidney stones- I was certainly not prepared for the Surgeon coming in and telling us about this large mass thing in my husband’s body that he was calling “in-operable”. What in the world was going on? Shock is I guess what you call it-that was me-in shock.