My back started hurting, and my primary care doc thought it was muscle stiffness, gave me a steroid shot, and sent me to physical therapy. When it got worse and worse, after about a month, he finally had me do an MRI.

My MRI was around 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, and about five hours later (10:30 PM) I got a call from the radiologist who said that I should go the the ER, so I replied that I would go first thing in the morning, and he said: “No, you need to pack a bag and go to the ER immediately.“

Did another MRI around 02:00 AM that night, and then around 04:30 the ER doc came in and told me that I had cancer. Spent Saturday morning thinking that I had cancer and planning for surgery the next day to remove my tumor, but then they came back with the results of my blood test and said that they think it is a staph infection (MSSA), so they kept me in the hospital for 4 days, and then I had a PICC (intravenous) line of antibiotics for 12 weeks.

Nobody has a clue where or how I picked up the infection.