Waiting to for Lung Biopsy Results

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marvelher2
marvelher2 Member Posts: 62
edited October 2017 in Not Diagnosed With a Recurrence or Metastases but Concerned

I haven't been on the forum for a while because I thought I was done with all this. Diagnosed November 2013 Stage IIa Her2 positive, ER/PR negative. Went through six rounds of Taxotere, Carboplatin, Perjetta, and Herceptin, followed by bilateral mastectomy and finished a year of Herceptin. All seemed well until an MRI in March showed a 1 cm nodule on my lower right lobe of my lungs that they were watching. Then, on August 25th I had a sudden major pain problem in my right supraclavicular area followed by dyspnea (shortness of breath). Went to the emergency room and they did a CT. I had abdominal pain too, so they looked for appendicitis or cyst infection (I have polycystic kidney and liver disease) which was negative. But this time the CT caught the lower lungs and said I had two nodules that I believe they said one in the right and on the left. (I need a copy of the report). Meanwhile, they sent me home and the dyspnea continued, and I began to run a low grade fever, mostly in the evening. Then I started caughing and became congested, but never had any blood in my sputum. I had a planned vacation, so I went to my primary and asked for an antibiotic because it felt like pneumonia. She gave me a Z pack and sent me for a chest xray, but I didn't hear back for five days. The nurse finally called and said I had pneumonia, and just finish the antibiotic, which I already had and was starting to feel better. However, by the time I got home, the symptoms had again worsened, so I went to urgent care for more antibiotics, Levequin this time.

Meanwhile, they scheduled a full chest CT which I had a week later. Bad news, now I had FIVE nodules, three in the lower left lobe, one in the middle right lobe, and one in the upper left lobe. Then I actually saw the X-ray results that showed an elevated right hemidiaphragm with blunting of the costophrenic angle and basilar airspace disease on the right. Both reports said suspicious of pulmonary metastases because of my history and because none of these nodules were there in 2014 when they did my PET scans. I had a PET scan shortly after which did light up the nodules, but nothing else. I know that many active processes can cause false positives on PET so I'm not completely surprised by that. Then this Monday, I had a lung biopsy and am frantically awaiting results.

I am so very hopeful that the nodules are caused by either bacterial or fungal infection. I have spent at least nine months of the last year and a half in rural Hawaii in an off-grid environment setting up a farm for my son to manage, so I had lots of opportunities for weird infections. It also seems super odd that metastases would grow so fast! And the first one (in March on the MRI) was reported in the lower right lobe, but that seems to have gone away and the only nodule on the right is in the middle lobe. There are now three on the left lower lobe that were not there before, the largest being 2.4cm. Has anyone else had a similar scare with a benign outcome, or do I need to prepare myself for the probability of being stage four?

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