Conversation: The conversation between human and AI assistant.
[|Human|] Hi, my mum has a persistent cough after having relatively serious cold/flu like symptoms last week. She was light headed and in bed for several days. She is a smoker who recently had her thyroid out ( small amount of cancer at the centre) and last night at a work function someone mentioned to her that he cough sounded like lung spurs caused by peumonia. Apparently this person had suffered something similar with this diagnosis. My mum insists she is starting to feel better but I am concerned that she needs to visit a Dr which she keeps avoiding. What are lung spurs and could these synptoms indicate she has something more than a cold/flu? She is 62 years old, a little overweight but not majorly and she has a golf ball sized growth on the rhs of her neck. Apparently it is benign, but it was tested a long time ago and appears to me to keep growing. she was meant to have it removed through surgery at the start of the year but has avoided that too. Thanks.
[|AI|]  Spurs, by medical definition is a short pointed growth or process on a part of the body. With your moms case, it could be calcium deposits, accumulating causing this process. Calcium deposits are small accumulations of calcium, which can accumulate anywhere in your body. These create bone spurs, kidney and gall stones, and, in the shoulder, tendonitis. Many calcium deposits don't require medical treatment (they can even be reabsorbed right back into your body). In the lungs, however, they can be a sign that you have a serious underlying condition that is causing them to form. While calcium deposits in the lung are usually benign (non-cancerous), they can become malignant. Calcium deposits should be monitored both to prevent cancer, and because many of the conditions that cause calcification are also serious.