Crisis averted: everything is peachy

Got the all-clear from the specialist yesterday. Obviously I hadn't mentioned this before so you are doubtless thinking STD's or some other smart idea.

Actually, it was because (thankfully) my knee is not full of cancer.

This little lump had been growing there for some years, sometimes it hurt, most of the time it didn't but as it became bigger I grew more concerned. Eventually last year I decided enough was enough and made the doctors take a proper look.

So they felt it, poked it, got all their friends, associates and trainee doctors to look at it; and agreed it was a cyst, best have a quick ultrsound and then if it's causing you a problem we'll whip it out.

The ultrasound however only added to the uncertainty; the one thing they could say was, it wasn't a cyst.
So, next stop is a CT scan. Those big, cylindrical machines you see on medical shows. You lie on a rolling bed in an undignified gown with your bit to be examined strapped up so it can't move. What they dont show you on tv is how ridiculously noisy the machine is - like using a masonry drill on oily marble; for 45 minutes. They do give you headphones to relieve the aural abuse, but as the music was Seargent Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, I'm pretty sure the drilling noise was preferable.

unfortunately the scan resulted in a followup meeting where the "C" word was deftly evaded but none the less clearly inferred. When told I'd have to visit the only specialist team in the north of england to be reviewed, it kinda gave the game away. This resulted in a Biopsy, roughly akin to having you knee anaethetised, and then having a red hot jewelry saw drawn though a part that hadn't been numbed. It turned out that whatever it was, it was connected to a nerve on the opposite side of my knee, and taking a sample out of it, was like electrocuting the other end.

Thankfully though the tissue came back as clear of cancerous cells. All I need is a follow-up scan in a few months and I get the all clear. Officially it's; well, still no clear answer on that, a "thickening" or growth of some kind, not a cyst, not cancer.

I don't get rid of the lump though, which is where I came in; but it's better to know what it is than to worry about it being what it isn't. Or worse, turn out to have ignored it all along when actually it is what you would least like...