Christmas 2009 - So the fall down the rabbit hole begins

Christmas...my 28th one to be exact...my favorite time of the year. Spent months shopping for the perfect gifts for everyone I love. Can't wait to see their faces when they open them! I also look forward to getting my old country farm house decorated and entertaining. I especially love having the big family Christmas Eve party at my house!

In fact, this year I had planned to do both Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner!

One little snag, since October I had been getting sick a lot. Having breathing problems, soreness in my neck and enlarged lymph nodes. So when I started getting the symptoms again and a fever a week before Christmas, I started to get nervous about hosting this year. But, I have my husband, my mom and my wonderful 11 year old son to help out so we would get though it.

My doctor referred me to an ENT doctor for an appointment Christmas Eve morning. After meeting with the doctor and not getting much of an answer I was sent "downstairs" for the CT scan of my neck. I was in so much pain I could bearly lay my head flat to do the scan.

The techs that do these scans aren't very good actors.

They are not supposed to tell you anything about what may or may not show up on the scan, but when they start freaking out, running over to the display monitor and banging on the glass...well, you know something just isn't right. My world fell apart in that instant. Nobody would tell me anything except for that they "saw something" and needed more pictures. That was enough. I couldn't see through the tears pouring out of my eyes. And that was just the beginning.

At 12:30 in the afternoon, I got the call from the doctor. She had the CT report from the radiologist.

"You have a mass in your chest, we don't know what it is for certain, but it appears to be lymphoma. We won't know for sure until they do a biopsy." "A Thoracic Surgeon will call you in four days." "Merry Christmas".