Diagnosis

My surgeon called last night. He said the lab report was very clear in that I have Sarcoidosis.

Now, the good news is that I don't have cancer again. The bad news is that I do have an auto-immune disease for which there is no cure, no one knows how it begins, and that can potentially wreak havoc on my lungs, heart, eyes, nervous system, and any other organs it attacks.

My research so far is sketchy. Nothing can tell me why this disease starts or if there is any one path it takes. It seems to be random and affects each patient differently. According to my surgeon, it can go into remission at any time and can flare up at any time. There is no cure, but they treat symptoms, often with steroids.

OK then.

The next step is to get a referral to a pulmonologist to be staged in the course of the disease and to see what, if any, damage has already been done to my lungs and lymph nodes. I'm also trying to read more and figure out if there are alternative therapies I can try that don't involve steroids. I won't take steroids. I had cancer once, I'm not risking getting it again because I'm trying to treat something else.

Beyond this, I'm just waiting to talk to my oncologist to get a recommendation. And, I'm trying to grasp the why of the fact that, after fighting so hard to get rid of the breast cancer, I now have to fight to manage this, maybe for the rest of my life.

Now I know, this is where anger starts.