How should I react to the new finding of a soft tissue mass in my larynx?
September 22, 2018
I had just entered a video call where four of us--my son-Justin Thorp; my son-in-law Adam Jones and close friend Ken Alexander spend a half hour or so talking about our daily lives and then praying together.
With the video camera on, my cellphone rang. I noticed it was my primary care physician and I was hoping for news about a CT scan and angiogram of my carotid arteries that I had taken the day before. It was partially.
There was no news about my plugged carotids--one is a hundred percent and the other 50--but there was an early finding about a soft tissue mass found in my larynx. I spent the next several hours trying to figure out what that means or could mean.
Consider it was a Friday afternoon. I wanted more information, but I couldn't get through to a doctor. I talked to a snippy nurse who said she couldn't give that information over the phone and that the doctor wasn't available and I talked to a medical assistant who said the doctor had left by that time. So I was left to my own devices with the web.
I checked Google for information about cancer of the larynx. I matched some of the symptoms, but my daughter told me to be careful about going down rabbit holes that web information creates.
So here I am with apparent carotid artery disease and a lump of unknown composition in my larynx that could leave me talking like the cop on Chicago PD who talks like he has rocks in his mouth.
How am I taking all this?
It depends on the time you ask. I'm anxious and I am frustrated and I'm praying all the time. It's an ongoing conversation with God asking for his healing and for his leading and thanking him for everything that he's given me like my family.
I'm now more liable to write down the names of people who ask me to pray for them and more liable to pray for them in the middle of the night when I get up to pee.
I know God's there and he is listening to me and watching out for me. Am I nervous about this? You bet.