I have thyroid cancer. There, I said it. Not my favorite topic of discussion, but ta-da, there you have it. Here's what happened:
Last week of April, went to my annual girlie parts exam. My OB/GYN felt a nodule on the left side of my throat and told me to go have an ultrasound. Oh glory. Went that day, ultrasound confirmed nodule on the left side of my thyroid. Perfect. My rock star nurse practitioner friend recommended going to an ENT and not a general surgeon. Went to ENT May 12. He did a scope to determine what type of biopsy I needed. He said an FNA (fine needle aspiration) biopsy would suffice. Went back 4 days later for an ultrasound and FNA in his office. Pathology came back undetermined. Well WTH does that mean exactly?! So I ask him, do I have thyroid cancer? He says, well you don't not have it. Obviously there are some cells acting up. Super duper. He recommends a hemithyroidectomy, removing only the left side of my thyroid. I said maybe we needed to be proactive and take out the whole thing. I mean come on, who wants to go through 2 surgeries, right? He says the hemithyroidectomy should take care of it. Cool. June 14 had outpatient surgery to remove left side of thyroid. Surgery was not that bad. I had the surgery on a Tuesday and was back to typing on Friday. What totally sucked is that I was on strict lifting restrictions. No lifting anything over 20 pounds for 10 to 14 days. Are you shitting me? You're shitting me, right? Colby weighs 65 pounds now. So I had to arrange for all this extra help with Colby and hated it. Grateful for the help, but let's face it, nobody can take care of him like his mama!
Oh, it gets better. Pathology from nodule came back positive for papillary carcinoma. Yep, thyroid cancer. Perfect, just perfect. ENT recommended taking out right side of thyroid. Mama was not happy at this news. A 2nd surgery, when I specifically asked him if we could just take the whole thyroid to begin with?! Still makes me angry when I think about it. Surgery was scheduled Aug 23. ENT called and needed to reschedule, which worked out well because that was the day Colby was admitted to the hospital. Surgery rescheduled twice in Sept but I had to cancel/reschedule because Colby was still in hospital. Once we get home I called to reschedule surgery. My ENT is doing mission work in Africa the whole month of October. I won't even repeat the stream of obscenities that burst out of my mouth upon hearing that news.
Long story longer, I'm having outpatient surgery tomorrow with another doc in the practice to remove rest of my thyroid. Am I nervous? Slightly. I've never even met this dude. All he's done is looked at my chart, records, pathology, etc. I'm totally pissed about not being able to take care of Colby. Trying to scramble around to get extra nursing hours approved, plus trying to find nurses to cover the hours. Thank God for our sweet, dependable, jabber jaws little babysitter. Without her, I'd be pretty screwed over the next few days. And of course thank God for my parents. They're probably going to have to help more, too. You know, we didn't see enough of each other in the 39 days and nights Colby was just in the hospital!!
So why am I telling you this long, boring story? To offer some advice. If I had to do over, I would INSIST the ENT take out all my thyroid to begin with. Actually there was an RT up at Cincy Children's who went through the same exact thing. She told doc to take it all out, he said no need, and she had 2 surgeries also. So if you or anyone you know is going through this, think about what I said. Chances are you'll have the whole thyroid removed sooner or later so what's the diff? No big deal being on thyroid medicine. It's cheap and millions of people are on it for hyper/hypothyroidism. Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm telling you if I could go back, this shit would have been over weeks, if not months ago. Just sayin'.
Well, gonna go pig out on some M&M's and make sure my duckies are in a row for tomorrow. No eating after midnight so I better get in my last supper. Girl gotta keep her strength up you know.
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