Health Update

I just wanted to post a little story (well actually kind of a long story) about what has been going on lately around the Fraley house. Let's go back a little ways to March...
I was playing a gig out in Santa Monica and whilst resting my head on my hand I discovered a small lump in my neck, right under my left ear, almost under my jaw. I asked my sister-in-law, who is a physician's assistant, if I should get it checked out and she suggested I do so.
I went to see my doctor at the USC Health Center. She said it was probably nothing to worry about because it was softer than a cancerous type of tumor would normally be. She thought it was a lymph node. She ran a few tests from my blood and everything came back pretty normal. She referred to the main doctor at the health center.
A couple weeks later I went to see him. He put me on an antibiotic regiment for 10 days to see if I may have had something viral that was causing the lymph node. The antibiotics didn't have any effect on the lymph node so I was referred out again to an ENT at the medical campus.
The ENT, upon first examination of the lymph node, thought that it was a tumor in my salivary gland because of its location near my jaw and under my ear. He sent me to pathology to get a fine needle aspiration biopsy on the tumor.
(I'll note here that all of these appointments were two to three weeks apart. By the time I had this biopsy, school had ended and it already May!)
The results of the biopsy came back as Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis. At one time this was considered a type of cancer. Now, it is only considered "cancerous" if there are multiple tumors throughout the body. My ENT told me that as long as there is only one tumor, it can be removed by surgery and the cancer will not be invasive.
He sent me in for a PET scan, which would show any other tumors if they existed. I don't know if any of you have had a PET scan before, but it was intense! As many of you know, I go in once a year for a brain MRI. The MRI machine can be scary but there's not any needed preparation to get the scan done. With the PET, I couldn't eat or drink the night before. When I went in, I had to drink probably 20 ounces of a thick liquid that coats the GI tract to light it up on the scan. Then I had to receive a radioactive shot through an IV. I had to lay still for 45 minutes to let the radioactive material spread evenly throughout my body. This causes any other tumors to light up on the scan. Throughout the scan, I received more shots of contrast for different pictures and so forth. I couldn't be near Julia for the rest of the day because I was giving off radiation. Overall, a crazy day!
The results of the PET scan was what I was most nervous about. To even think about going on any sort of radiation therapy really scared me! But all turned out well! I only had the one tumor and we scheduled the surgery.
So that is where I'm at now. I had the surgery two days ago. I was only in the hospital for 24 hours. I surprisingly feel really well, I even went to church this morning for an hour. I have some face paralysis because the surgeons had to trace out the nerves in my face and lift a lot of skin and delicate parts out of the way to cut the tumor out. I can't fell my left ear or anywhere around the incisions and the feeling will take weeks to months to return. The incision is glued shut so I can shower and do pretty much anything normal without even a bandage on! It's crazy, you wouldn't know I had surgery unless you move my hair to look around my ear.
So anyway, that's what's going on with me lately. I'll go back in a couple weeks to hear final results of pathology done on the tumor and see where that takes me. But for now, I'm just at home resting and trying to have some sort of summer break with my family!

~Lauren