The Hole Within

CHAPTER 52

I went to my pulmonology appointment with anxiety. I saw Dr. Gerace. He had been an army doctor and he had no bedside manner. Dr. Gerace told Mel and I that I had a cavity in the left upper lobe of my lung. He told us it was not cancer and we sighed with relief. He said it could be caused by a number of different organisms but he guessed that I had coccidioides, commonly known as Valley Fever. Valley fever, he explained, was a fungal infection caused by a fungus commonly found in the soil in Arizona. He said he would test for it in my blood. The symptoms continued to effect my way of life. While I waited for my next appointment with Dr. Gerace I was referred to a GI doctor for the Hepatitis C. My GI doctor was Dr. Wiss, he took my history (I left out the part of being an IV drug user) and told him that I had unprotected sex with an IV drug user. He took blood telling me that they would test for a viral load which would tell him how severe the Hepatitis was. The results came back that my viral load was low so we did nothing.

I went back to Dr. Gerace and was told everything was negative and that I should follow up in three months where they would look at the cavity again. Having been ill for six months already I was disappointed and frustrated. I just wanted someone to tell me what was wrong and how to treat it. Mel was losing patience with me. I would swallow down pills so I could go shopping with her or go out on the weekends. I would force myself to smile and act happy when all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Even with the pills I was miserable.

By nine months I was desperate for an answer. The CT scan showed that my cavity was getting bigger. Dr. Gerace told me that he wanted to do a bronchoscopy, where they threaded a scope up your nose and down into your lungs to look and take samples. Finally, the day of my bronchoscopy came. It was an outpatient procedure done at the surgi-center. Mel kissed me goodbye before they came in to get me. They positioned me in a chair which slightly reclined. Dr. Gerace told the nurse to give me the sedative that was supposed to make me groggy. It did not. I had such a high tolerance to drugs that it did not do a thing. He gave me more sedative but I was still fully alert and awake. Losing his patience with me, he started the procedure anyway. It was horrible. Dr. Gerace threaded the scope up my nose and into my lung. I could feel the strangest sensation as he took samples and he did a washing, where they squirted water in your lung and sucked it up., I felt like I was drowning and cried through the entire invasive procedure. I was helpless in his hands. I was so angry with him for not caring about the pain he had put me though, nor the fear that had me tangled in its talons. I swore I would never go back to him. And I did not. I switched to his partner Dr. Tuber. The results came back negative and I went into deep despair again.