One day my wife was scratching the back of my head and noticed a large lump that she hadn't noticed before. The odd thing about the lump is that it had appeared relatively suddenly to her. I suppose I should have noticed it first, but I don't pay attention to the bumps on my head as much as she does. I scheduled an appointment with the local clinic and they said they could schedule me for a week from my call.

The hardest part about the waiting is that you keep wondering how the bump got there, what it could be, and of course, worst case scenarios. At the doctor's appointment, I had both a student and an on-call examine the bump and thought it was just a cyst. However, that would require a different type of procedure, requiring an incision and I would have to come back on a different day to have them do it. So more waiting and more worrying. One week later I arrive to find a room with cutting instruments and everyone prepared to do some minor surgery. As a quick reference check they consult with the other attending, who doubts the cyst diagnosis and claims its just bone. They bring in another doctor who thinks cyst, and finally a fourth who says, "I don't know,lets do an MRI." The surgery is called off to get the MRI.

Two weeks later I am scheduled for an MRI at the local hospital. The extra delay of course casues more waiting and wondering what the bump is. Having never had an MRI on my head before its intriguing to see how the whole process works. The interesting part is that they did two scans of my head, once with iodine and once without. The whole process only takes a few minutes, and by the time I am ready to leave they even give me a CD with the images from the procedure.

The white dot on the bottom is the target they placed on my scalp to tell them where they should look.

My profile... only a face a mother could love. 

The Diagnosis? Bone. (Not all the way through like my wife sometimes suspects.) It was just the normal bone that sits at the back of your head, and all the pictures showed happy and health head and brains. If you have never had a picture of your own head from the inside it is a little odd to see.

At best guess, I had dropped so much weight recently (from 220 pounds 2 years ago to 175) that my skull bones had been softened by the layer of fat sitting on my body. As I dropped the weight, the bones became more pronounced and not as softened by the layer of skin around it. After all was over, the worrying was about nothing. That said it seriously made me question my priorities for the weeks it was going on.