The Beginning

One night, my neck swelled up. Within like an hour. Scared me to death, so we went to the Emergency Room. They said it was an infection in my saliva gland, prescribed me antibiotics and sent me home. No testing or anything. By Wednesday, it was the same if not worse, so back to the E.R. we went. The P.A. thought it could have been a stone in the gland, or an abscess and ordered a CT scan. He came in and said there was no abscess ( no mention of a tumor ), changed my antibiotic and made me promise I would go see the ENT ( ear, nose, throat ). So, I called on Thursday they got me in on Friday morning. The DR came in and proceeded to tell me it was a tumor, and wanted to get a biopsy. Biopsy. You hear that word and get tunnel vision. I really don't remember much of what he said after that. All I could think about was "I have a tumor. Oh my God, I have a tumor." So we made an appointment for a needle biopsy that following Monday. That was kind of painful. ( not to mention scary as hell ) But I got through that, and the test came back negative for cancer a few days later. But, I knew something just wasn't right.

The ENT wanted to wait a little while to see if it shrunk, so I went back a week later. It stayed the same, so he wanted to do surgery to remove the gland ( total parotidectomy ) and tumor. However, we don't have insurance, so I had to go through the process of financial aid. Sending all of our financial info in and then waiting. Oh, the waiting. Waiting is seriously worse than the condition, sometimes. Not knowing is the absolute worst. Someone else having control of your medical needs. So scary and unfair.

( Can I just say right here that it's just about waiting, waiting in the waiting room for an appointment, waiting for a nurse to call, waiting for financial aid to call..my life in their hands, essentially. Waiting. )

Finally! I got the call. 4 weeks later. F.o.u.r weeks. That's all. Eyeroll. But I got approved 100 percent, best news ever! I just so wanted this over. Two and a half weeks later was the surgery. I was scared to death. Surgery went well though, I didn't have a ton of pain like I expected. Oh, I was in pain..don't get me wrong..just wasn't as bad as I thought. What hurt worse was the bruised tailbone I got from being in surgery for 5 plus hours. My hands were also numb for a few days. I couldn't even get out of bed without help. I went home to recover ( had the best nurse ever, Shawn took great care of me )...and wait. Yes, the lovely waiting. Eleven days of waiting. Then, the doctor called me with the results...I wished he wouldn't have called.

( This all happened from February to around the middle of April )