Finally. Today is my biopsy. Getting to this point has been a real ordeal. I don't know what will be next... depends on the diagnosis. I won't have that until, at least, Friday.

Occasionally I wonder why this has happened. I was trying to do the right thing, live the right way. I spent years getting out of debt and thought I was starting to build my life again. But this illness has totally drained me, financially and emotionally.

I suppose that there is a lesson here. I am pretty sure I will have time to contemplate... But benign is beautiful. It's just that no one at the hospital has given me much hope for that.

It's been a few days since I wrote on my blog. Finally, after weeks/months of trying to fix my throat, I finally saw an ENT doctor. He verified that I need a biopsy of the masses in the back of my throat and said that usually masses/tumors where mine are located are cancer.

So I have to wait to get the biopsy set up. And, of course, there is a lot of crap to go through before I can even have the biopsy. I have become much less impressed with the New Jersey health care system for uninsuranced citizens.

I only hope that if it is cancer that it doesn't grow too much while I'm waiting to find out if it is cancer.

Now I know... sort of.  I know that there is a mess in my throat.  I know I have a lot of doctor visits ahead of me.  I know there is a chance it could be fatal.  But I want to live.  And I will do whatever it takes to live.

It feels like I have been in pain all my life... it has only been daily since the first part of January 2012.  But it started when I returned to New Jersey.  Every now and then I get a moment or two where the pain isn't constant and I remember what it was like.  I don't know if it will ever go away and I don't have any way to plan my life. 

I hope to get results this week from the CT scan last Friday.  What I am more afraid of is that it won't show anything and there won't be any answers.  I am ready, I think, to face whatever it is.  I know I don't want to live this way... constant pain and no reason or explanation for it.

I wasn't ready for this.  I knew a serious medical condition could happened, as it has happened in the past... without warning and mostly at a most inconvenient period of time.  That's what happened when I got sick in 2001 and it took me over 2 years to get everything fixed. 

I had a lot of hope and plans for this year.  They all depended upon me working full time and saving... something I have recently learned to do.  I was debt free and planning a trip to Germany to see my niece and her family.  I know that many others have bigger problems than I have... and I am now feeling stupid for feeling sorry for myself.  But that is why I write.  To straighten myself out.

As long as I am breathing there is hope.  And perhaps this week will be the beginning of a healing process.