Two years ago I had a kidney stone that was diagnosed after the pain/vomiting sent me to the ER. I had a CT scan of my abdomen which confirmed this. I remember clearly the doctor coming in after my CT and telling me it was a stone, and not telling me anything else (this is important). I passed the stone and the follow-up ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder were normal.

Last week I had a mammogram, and this morning I had an e-mail telling me the results were in. I logged into the patient portal to see them and it was all clear. Awesome news. But then I noticed that the reports from my previous scans relating to the kidney stone were there, and I got curious because I wanted to see what parts of my body that abdominal CT scan covered. I thought if I looked at it, if any fears came up down the road I could just refer to that for comfort. Stupid, I know.

So the kidney stone was there, but there were also two other findings that were completely new information to me. First there was some sort of "elongation" of the liver. Then, there was a "cystic pancreatic uncinate lesion", with a comment to further evaluate with an MRI. I was never told about this, nor was I told to get an MRI of any kind. The MRI thing was sort of scary, but I saw "cyst" and thought "okay, cysts are common and from what I know benign."

But my curiosity got the better of me and I googled, and I found that although these "cysts" are commonly incidental findings, they're also seen as a risk for concurrent or future pancreatic cancer, and CT scans aren't really capable of determining if they're benign of malignant. There are a couple of different kinds and my scan didn't indicate, probably because it couldn't tell. So now I'm in an absolute panic that I could have had a malignant pancreatic tumor growing for two years.

I'm sort of young for pancreatic cancer (43; I was 41 at the time of the scan) and have no symptoms, at least none that I've noticed, which I guess is good? I don't know when symptoms typically "kick in" and I sure won't be googling that. I'll be calling my doctor as soon as her office opens, but I feel so sick to my stomach right now.