The Fanning Dilemma.

So..........I went off for my crucial appointment with Dr Fanning this morning......to hear the results of the PET scan last week.I left an hour before my appointment even though it should only take 15 minutes in normal traffic.......but at 7.45 am we are talking rush hour. It was a good job I did because I crawled along the Moorooka Mile as a van had broken down backing the traffic up to Rocklea.In the end I arrived 15 minutes early and took my seat in the waiting room. The waiting room had been festively decorated. There was an Angel on the coffee vending machine...On the ceiling there was, well what I hoped was, a turkey....I sincerely hoped they were not trying to say "Welcome to Cancer Services...your goose is well and truly cooked!"Just as I had decided that they weren't going to call me to weigh me and measure my height as there was no point because I was a 'goner'.....someone called my name.It was a very smiley male nurse..."Hello, How are you?""O.K" was all I could offer."My name is Emmanuel," he said.....and all I could think was that it was surely a sign that I was on my way to Heaven.He weighed and measured me and sent me back to the chairs. My appointment was at 8.45 but at 9.10 I started to overthink too much.Dr Fanning was obviously delaying telling me bad news......perhaps he was discussing possibilities with surgeons, even brain surgeons or worse, undertakers!Oh heck! I just wanted to get it over and done with......would I cry?......would I be brave and say 'Oh well, C'est la vie!'A bloke behind me was saying,"My brother had an Asian lady......he said she was fantastic!" I was immediately on the wrong track and was only redirected when he continued.." They gave him two weeks to live with his lung cancer, but he saw her and he is still with us 18 months later."I wondered how long I had got."Nicholas Allen?"It was Dr Fanning......here we go.Did he look worried? Did he seem sad? I tried to read his face but couldn't."Well it's good news!" He said. " It didn't show up on the scan and the scan didn't show anything else anywhere on your body......but that leaves us with the question what do we do now? You have a large lesion on your lung that appears to have grown in 6 months unless the measurements are a bit out. Do we leave it for another 6 months and monitor it or do we take it out, with the consequences of a 6 to 12 week recovery period."Yikes! that sounded like a BIG operation!I told him that I was not thrilled with the idea of a big operation  but would have it if he felt it was the best thing to do.He said that realistically there was a less than 5% chance that it was cancer but that if we leave it 6 months and then find something we will be saying 'Oh why didn't we take it out 6 months ago?' If we went ahead and took it out he said that the chance of complications was also less than 5%."It's like in cricket," he said, "it comes down to the umpire's decision.....and you are the umpire."I didn't want to be the umpire.......I wanted to be 'left back'...in the changing rooms."What would you do if it were you?" I asked. Of course he could not say.....it was down to me......."OK, I will discuss it at a radiology meeting tomorrow." He saved me. " I'll get some of my colleagues to have a look at it and we will see what they recommend and I will ring you tomorrow. If they recommend surgery I will pas you on to the surgeon."It was perhaps the last time I would see Dr Fanning. I thanked him for everything he had done.I walked out, sort of relieved, but still with lingering worries. The smiley expensive raffle ticket girl approached me again in the foyer.....I put up my hand to stop her....'I'm not interested,' I said and walked passed her.