My head is spinning and I'm so stressed about making the right decision. I'm fortunate that my surgeon is familiar with PVNS, however, as she put it there aren't any clear cut answers as far as over treating or under treating because everyone is so different.
I have diffuse PVNS in my knee and already have a significant amount of arthritis. I'm scheduled for surgery next Wednesday and have some big decisions to make. This will be the first and hopefully the last surgery. Dr. D will begin surgery arthroscopically...take a frozen section for biopsy.
If confirmed to be PVNS the surgeon needs to know beforehand how aggressively I want to her to treat it. Continue with the arthroscope or revert to an open synovectomy. Post surgery she will have me speak with an oncologist radiologist.
Dr. D looked over my chest ct with me. She just said “no, don’t go there. It would be so incredibly rare for it to show up in your lungs.” What ever is in my lungs grew in the last month and is now involving the lymph nodes in the mediastium... they will take another ct of the lungs in 3 months. I’m still trying to get authorization from insurance for my thoracic and lumbar spine MRI to help them figure out why I have so much back/flank pain. Hopefully not PVNS.
When a person starts aging they require more tests to make sure your healthy enough to survive surgery. Personally I think all of the tests are to cover the anesthesiologists butt. It would be cheaper for him to just wear depends in case I scare the piss out of him instead of me paying several hundred dollars to have tests repeated within the 30 day criteria window.
Oh well, going to my primary care doc tomorrow to obtain a health clearance. I haven’t been healthy for a longtime and the PVNS was just a side trip on the way to finding out what’s causing me to feel so ill and cause so much pain.
I’m going to use distraction and refocussing now and go make some cut out Christmas cookies.
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