After 40 Years of Smoking ...

... I got my first chest CT this morning.

TL;DR:

Longer read:

OK, it might not be that bad.

Some highlights:

• "Finding suggestive of pulmonary Langerhans' cell histiocytosis with multiple pulmonary nodules ..."
• "Nodular contour of the liver which can be seen with chronic hepatocellular disease."
  
• "Probably benign finding: 1-2% risk of malignancy"
• "Clinically significant or potentially significant non-lung cancer finding." (I think that may be referring to the liver part)
• "Mild mixed emphysema."
• "[I]nnumerable bilateral pulmonary nodules measuring up to 4 mm."

The only surprise there is that it didn't say something like "geez, this guy is full of lung cancer." Four decades of smoking that didn't result in emphysema would be the real surprise.

I'm not that worried about the liver stuff -- I got the workup on that several years ago, and it amounted to "everything seems fine, but we can see why you were sent to us because it does look kinda weird."

And there was no evidence of aortic aneurisms, which I was worried about given my family history. Mild coronary artery calficifation, mild aortic atherosclerosis, etc. I had a stress test and echocardiogram a few years ago, and seem to be in reasonably good shape there.

Presumably I will find out what it all means at my next appointment with my primary care physician. The only actual recommendation in the report was that I have another CT in six months instead of a year.

I also had blood work done. Apparently rosuvastatin is good stuff. My triglycerides were in normal range for the first time I can recall. And my total cholesterol count was below normal, with the "bad" cholesterol in the normal range.