Hi Just joined as trying to get my head around diagnosis. 

My Name is Darren, I'm 45 and live in Bristol 

A bit of background.....

Unlike many I have had no symptoms that I knew of that pointed I had anything wrong.

About 5 weeks ago I had what I thought was a cold, woke up morning after it started and found my temperature was high 30's and as my wife is a nurse and it was when covid was kicking off my wife advised I stay home from work...I went to get my 19month old son up and he also had a temp so I kept him home from nursery with me.

My son went for a sleep mid morning so I decided I'd make the most of it and went back to bed.

I woke a few hours later with a temp of 44.7 so called my doctors as I couldn't get it to come down and was struggling to breathe, they advised I call 111, after a long wait I spoke to someone and as I was at home on my own with my little one they sent an ambulance out to check me over, it was decided I needed to go to A&E as they also could bring my temp down or stabilise my heart rate, they suspected a chest infection and wanted me to have IV antibiotics. 

At hospital I was given a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia but as that was clear I was sent home.

A week later I had a call from doctors to say that there was something showing on the x-ray they were concerned with, they suspected a hernia and wanted to send me for a CT scan to confirm. I ended up having CT scan 2 days later and told I would get results within 7 days, well the following day I was again called by the doctor and told that it wasn't a hernia but actually a tumour about 7cm in my chest cavity and I needed a biopsy to confirm what it was.

A week later had the biopsy,  (one of the most painful procedures I have ever had) anyway 2 days ago I had call with results and told I have a thymoma.....I'd never heard of this before and neither had my wife who is an specialist oncology & hematology nurse, we also struggle to find much info on line.

I've been told that the tumour needs to be removed but they can't confirm if its cancerous or not because of the way it acts.

I have a breathing test on Monday and a telephone consultation with the surgeon on Tuesday but I'm working myself into a state about it and not sleeping, this in turn is putting stress on my wife as she is still working and is also 17 weeks pregnant. 

I'm just looking for some reassurance or other people's understanding/experience of a few things.

1, How is the operation carried out? Keyhole or full open surgery I suspect full open due to where it is

2, How long will I have to stay in hospital after operation carried out

3, How long is recovery ie how long off work, how long before I will be able to lift my 19 month old, how long before I will be able to drive.

4,  How likely is it I will need follow up treatment ie radiotherapy or chemotherapy 

Sorry for such a long post just wanted to give as much detail as possible 

Darren