Hibbing Woman Thankful to be Celebrating Thanksgiving with her Family

HIBBING, Minn. — Carol Lee, had been to her doctor’s office many times for the difficulty she was having with her breathing.

X-rays of her lungs had not detected anything troubling. That led to her having a CT scan. The scan showed there was a small nodule on the lung.

That led to Dr. Swanson telling Carol to come in for an appointment.

“That was a surprise,” said Carol Lee.  “I thought I was healthy as a horse you know, all that goes. We all think Yeah, but yes there was a lump on my lung and aorta.”

Dr. Swanson wanted to know if the small mass of cells on her lung was cancerous. But it would be dangerous to check because Carol’s nodule was near the aorta.

A relatively new piece of medical equipment at Essentia, a Robot-Assisted Bronchoscopy, made it possible to safely reach the growth without having to open the chest.

Dr. Eric Swanson explained the new equipment.   “You essentially make a 3-D road map of a patient’s airway using a Catscan. And then once you create that road map you can drive the scope down there and the scope says take a left, take a right, go up or down until you get to the nodule itself.  Once you get to it you have the ability to Biopse it with a working channel right in the scope right here.”

“They could not do a biopsy prior to that because of where it was, so they had to do a biopsy first right away when I was lying there sleeping,” said Carol

The biopsy showed the growth was cancerous and needed to be removed.  But first, a dye was used to mark the cancerous area for the surgeon.

Swanson said, “That dye shows up and turns bright green, X marks the spot, go ahead and cut here.”

Using a very small incision the surgeon was able to remove the mass of cells.

These procedures caused very minimal damage to Carol’s body, and that was good news.

“I had the surgery on Thursday, and went home on Saturday, two days, I stayed in the hospital with it,” said Carol.

So this year as people pause to give thanks, Carol is among those with even more reasons to be thankful.

“I guess you’ve got a lot to be thankful for this year. Tell me about it.

Everything, Family, living you know, Everything it’s hard to say.  But yeah everything you know. Like I said, I’ve got a 98 year old mother and I have a two-month, not even a month-old, grandson.”

In Hibbing I’m Pat Brink Fox 21 Local News