Hello – I’m New To The Forum!

While I personally would be in full on panic mode and not want to wait 4 months for another CT… I can almost see where your oncologist might not have those same alarms blaring. Oddly enough, many folks here at the forum have had incidental findings on CT's. Benign lung nodules can be caused by a multitude of things, including a fungus, which your antibiotic wouldn't help. Additionally, different antibiotics are better with certain types of bacteria than others… which is why depending on what is causing an infection and where… your doc would choose the best antibiotic for countering that particular bug. All of that aside, it is still possible that your melanoma from a couple of years back, has metastisized. From a doc's potential perspective, your nodules are still quite small. Not that we wouldn't all much prefer to hear/read "I see nothing."! Buuuuut… with the largest being 8mm at this point, in 4 months, it could be reasonably assumed that, even if melanoma, they would be roughly 1.5 – 2 cm in size. That kind of growth would be pretty clear, even on a basic CT. And yes, that would suck. However… even IF that is the case… those lesions would still be considered small, and treatment options would remain the same. ALLLLL of that aside, I'd still be after my doc for a 3 month follow up scan at the latest… even if for no other reason than to shorten the duration of my panic about the unknown. It can't hurt to ask… right? : )

Ugh… just the words "standard of care" make my eyes roll. I'm guessing that many of the executives behind how these standards are set, have never experienced being "the odd man out". Standard of care almost got me killed… twice. Needless to say, I've never allowed for strike 3, because we all know that means OUT. Call your oncologist… call your insurance company… if you're in an HMO, call your physician's health group. Sometimes you may even have to show up. Physically get into their faces. Even people with the best of intentions can quickly "forget" to handle something for you once the phone has been hung up. While docs may not feel like 4 months is a long time… it certainly seems like an eternal stretch when you're on the patient end of the stick! Best of luck to you for getting things bumped up…… aaaaaand we'll toss in some extra luck that those nodules turn out to be nothing alarming. : )  Make sure you're soaking up a healthy dose of hope with that mental prep. There's a lot of scary stuff to read out there… but then, there are a lot more of us these days, who still come out bright and shiny years later. ; )