20 days... shouldn't I be better now?

It's now been about 20 days since my surgery. Not the instant relief I expected. I still feel like I am working very hard to breathe. I'm not sure why. I know there is progress. When I first went to respitory therapy before my surgery they said I was operating at 63% of my lung capacity. They showed me where this was on the "incentive spirometer". It was a mark of 1500 upon inhaling. I can now on occasion get it up to almost 2500, but it's hard work and everything has to be just right. Dr. Goff told me that I could be "doing aerobics the day I was released"...ummmm not exactly.. lol. I have my follow up appointment with him next Monday.
I have days where I feel really good and then my ambition gets the better of me and I fly around working like crazy.. only to wake up the next day exhausted and hurting all over. I think that is partly the painkillers; they make you feel better than you are and then it is easy to do stupid things.
I feel bad that Dr. Goff told Lee and Linda that I might only have a "couple of years"... oh man. That was right after surgery and he thought my scar tissue was some sort of cancer. He proclaimed to have "gotten most of it; and may have given her a couple of years..." He was positive it was cancer and had all sorts of hows and whys for them. They went through a weekend of hell. I had no idea. I can see though that this type of thing will could possibly come up in the future; any time I have a spot or bump or pimple... the first conclusion a doctor will come to is "cancer". I'm going to have to be tough to face that and fight for proper treatments etc. I'm rather peeved at all the times they tapped the fluid and didn't test it because "we have to assume that it is...".. it wasn't.