Remember my little post about the Terrible November? It was really a messed up month but thing got better towards the end of the year. However luck is apparently not on our side as new troubles arrived just few weeks into 2019. The only good thing was that these thing did not occur so bunched up as it was in November were one week was just one bad day after another.
In mid January my mother got an injury on her nose checked which did not heal for the past year. They took a sample and cut a layer of skin away in order to let everything heal properly. Shortly after that check up and little surgery she got a call to come back to the doctor. Turns out she got skin cancer and they needed to take another sample and cut yet again another layer of skin away. This was not the first skin cancer rodeo for my mother as she had malignant melanoma when I was 8-9 years old. She spent a several weeks in hospital and got everything removed successfully. Ever since then she had regular check ups but somehow that one spot on her nose was never discovered until now. Thankfully everything turned out well as the one on her nose turned out to be non-melanoma skin cancer in a very early stage. Because of that they were able to remove everything already during the second small surgery.
Now we come to February and all seemed well for a long time. In fact everything went way too smooth as first of all my mother was fine again, then my father’s blood values were improving drastically and we even had a week of something like holidays during the Chinese New Year. But towards the end of the month all went downhill again. My wife got a call from her mother that Granny in China got salivary gland tumor and that they could do nothing about it as she is too weak for a surgery. She is same age as my father (turning 78 this year) but she looks about 15 years older and has never done anything for her health. This means that she is already exhausted walking 50m from a bus station to a restaurant while my father bicycles each summer several thousand kilometres. As this tumor was just discovered we are not sure yet how everything will develope from her on. MIL already said that she won’t come this summer to help us with the kids and household unlike the past years. Now my wife and I can not handle the business and the kids at the same time so FIL already agreed to come instead of his wife.
But there is still a slight chance that things might turn out a bit better for granny. The check ups she had a first were done with a CT-Scan and the doctor said immediately that it looks very dire. However few days later MIL took her mother to another doctor for a MRI-Scan and there the doctor said that they can see nothing indicating a tumor, just that one lymph node is enlarged. Next week they will perform a biopsy to make sure what exactly is going on so we really really hope for the best.
I must say it would be not the first time doctors in China are exaggerating a bit. Few years back I had a MRI-Scan so the “bone breaker” could pinpoint the problems I had with my neck and lower back (they did wonders during those few sessions as I never had the troubles reappear again). However at the hospital were the MRI-Scan took place they told me that I have some kidney issues. Later at the “bone breaker” they told us that we do not need to worry as that hospital is specialized on treating kidney troubles and most likely only want to earn some extra money for performing more tests on me. In Germany I got later a small check up and everything was fine. Now Granny had last year blood in her urine and the doctor at the hospital said that she has definitely bladder cancer. We got all worked up about it and later another doctor told her that she just had a bladder infection. So through these two example you might understand why we still have some hope when it comes to granny and that it is nothing too serious right now. We have a new month now so perhaps luck is on our side again?
Did you have any experience that a doctor gave you the wrong diagnosis?
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Crazy Chinese Family 