Puckered Up Paralysis

I have come to the conclusion that I want this lump in my throat cut out after I graduate from college.  I won’t be home long enough for surgery and recovery until then.  It’s so frustrating.  The lump comes and goes and shrinks and grows but it never fully goes away.  Unfortunately, after my last flare up, when it grew to the size of a large egg, it eventually shrank but didn’t whittle away into obscurity like usual.  All the other times it shrank it would grow so small as to be barely noticeable.  Not anymore.  It’s not huge and egg-like anymore but it’s definitely noticeable now.  I’m quite self-conscious about it.  If anyone is standing or sitting on my right side, I’m always so worried that they are looking at it, staring at it, being disgusted by it, judging me.  As if I didn’t have enough of a reason to keep my head down in a room full of people.  I’m always propping my chin in my hand, hoping  my arm is covering up the lump.  It has started consuming my thoughts so much that I just have to do something about it.  So, I’m gonna get this undesirable defect dug out.

Even though I don’t have a clue what it is.

In fact, no one does.  I’ve been to two different doctors and an ear, nose and throat specialist and the best diagnosis they can give me is a shrug of their shoulders.  I’ve been told it’s everything from a birth defect to Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma to some kind of cell mutation whose name is a page long.  But they all agree it should come out at some point.  At first, I didn’t want anyone diddling my throat without first figuring out exactly what was floating around in my flesh.  Perhaps there could be an alternative method to dissolve it.  Pills, lasers, something.  I decided to hold off on an operation until I could get a definite diagnosis.  And then the sucker shrank until it became invisible.  I could barely even feel it.  Because it wasn’t jutting out of my jugular like it once was, I wasn’t too concerned with it and moved on.  And then it came back and went away and came back again.  And so on and so forth.  It’s so frustrating because I don’t even know why it comes and goes.  I don’t know if it’s something I’m doing to make it flare up or if it’s my environment or what.  But I suppose none of that matters anymore because I am just fed up with this mystery mass.  I just want it cut out so I don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I am apprehensive to have surgery because I’ve never had any surgery before and, frankly, the idea of it scares me quite a bit.  Plus, I don’t want to have some huge scar scurrying across my throat or anything.  I’m already covered in enough blemishes without voluntarily adding another.  I just have to face the fact that I’m going to be tarnished either way.  I can have a lump or a scar.  Like always, I’m screwed either way. 

Several days ago, I was watching Mystery Diagnosis (an amazing show on the Discovery Health and TLC channels, check it out if you can) and they had a story about a lady with a huge lump in her neck that was very similar to mine, only hers was absolutely humongous and it was on the side of her next instead of closer to her throat like mine is.  It still intrigued me because maybe we have the same condition, just in different locations and stages of severity.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen the episode that I can’t remember specifics but what I do remember was after she had the lump removed, the right side of her face became paralyzed!  Whatever they took out of her caused her nerves to pinch or something and it left her face messed up.

Now, this presents a problem for me.  The two doctors that I talked to acted like taking the lump out wouldn’t be a big deal.  But what if they take the lump out and my face becomes paralyzed?  Once again, it’s not like this lady had the exact same condition as me but it was a similar procedure and what if I have similar results?  As much as this lump is scary and frustrating, I think having a half dead face would be the worse of the two situations.  What if the doctors goof up and pinch my nerves?  What if they accidentally remove my eyeball or amputate an arm?  I don’t know if I’m that pumped for the surgery anymore. 

It just seems like this is another bump in the road, another unexplainable, unnecessary bump in the road. 

I suppose the only thing I can do now is wait.  It’s not like I’m scheduled to have surgery next week.  I still have until May at the earliest.  Hopefully I can have more tests done and hopefully someone can figure this lump out and give me the assurance that when they take it out, it won’t take out one side of my face.