It's been a while.

What's been happening?!

I’m rounding what should be the end of my care for thyroid cancer and oh boy what a journey it’s been. The year started off with appointments and scans and more appointments and so much waiting. Parts of this year have been so stressful and parts have been really wonderful and it’s been a really exhausting rollercoaster.

On April 18th I had a 6 hour surgery to remove my thyroid and 30 lymph nodes. One of the hardest parts was walking into the hospital where I had spent every day with my Mom for a month while they treated her for renal cancer a few years prior. It brought up a lot of unexpected feelings. But the morning was also really beautiful, the sun was shining. They changed the time of the surgery so Jason and I both got to take Elliott to school and then head down to center city, it would have almost been delightful if I was allowed to eat something. They prepped me for surgery and wheeled me up to a pre-op waiting area that was filled well beyond capacity with folks lying around in hospital beds. I could hear folks conversations and was heartened by a couple old men admitting to their doctors that they were really scared between cracking jokes. I tried to watch the Golden Girls on TV but got sad when the commercials came on thinking if for some reason I died during surgery I didn’t want the last thing for me to remember to be a dog food commercial. Everyone was really nice and reassuring, they injected me with medicine and I fell asleep.

When I woke up that evening they told me that things went well, that they found more cancer than they had expected but they thought they got it all. Jason was there and I was really happy to see him. Elliott was playing at a friends house. I was in some pain and had drains in my neck which I was not expecting and felt a bit like Frankenstein. The night was long, my roommate was quiet and nice. I got some more painful shots, lots of pain meds, and they told me I might have to go home with the drains. I kind of insisted that I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want Elliott to see me with tubes coming out of my neck. To remove the drains they just said take a deep breath and then yanked them out. My nurse friend Karen says that nursing is part science, part plumbing. This felt true.

I came home, very swollen and it was hard to sit up. I watched Beef on Netflix. My throat was sore from being intubated so Jason made me soup. The next day was terrible because I had the worst period I’ve ever had in my life. There was so much pain and so much blood. I was so worried I called the hospital hotline to ask about it. Apparently this is normal after your body has been through a trauma like this and my hormones were likely wacky since your thyroid controls your hormones. It made me really mad. It felt like too much on top of everything else. But the next few days were better, friends brought food and sent cards and flowers and thoughtful things. I went to the follow up appointment a week later and they took off this sterile-strip tape that was covering my incision. I didn’t have any visible stitches on the outside. I didn’t realize how crazy I looked until later I answered the door to the pizza delivery guy and he looked visibly alarmed at my appearance. I was swollen and have a 5 inch scar across my neck.

The doctors made follow up appointments for a radioactive iodine treatment, which sounds like a super hero origin story. “Lady swallows radioactive pill to kill off remaining cancer cells, becomes bionic”. I watched some internet videos of people talking about their experience with the treatment. Basically you go to the hospital, people wearing protective gear hand you a pill they are careful not to touch then you have to swallow it and leave immediately. You’re supposed to stay 3 feet away from family members and pets for 3-5 days after the treatment. It is apparently very important that you use separate bathrooms because that’s how the radiation leaves your body. The doctor looked alarmed when I told her we only had one bathroom. Jason and Elliott will be staying with friends for a couple days while I’m radiating. This week I’m prepping for that with a low iodine diet. I can only eat meat, fruit and vegetables with some not iodized table salt. No dairy or eggs or seafood, no seaweed or chocolate or soy or anything pre-salted. It’s a weird list. I also had to go off the synthroid to prepare. My body will be starved of iodine, then they will give me the pill, the remaining thyroid cancer cells will attract the radioactive iodine and they will be killed by the radiation. It’s just one pill and a couple scans and then follow up appointments yearly after that.

The waiting has been the hardest part, and the low level anxiety that appears when something else comes up. Last week I had my hair pulled back and Jason said, “you have a lump on your neck.” I hadn’t noticed but there was a large lump on my neck which resulted in numerous e-mails, my doctor being out of office, another appointment, another scan, another biopsy. It was just fluid build up. After all those appointments the fluid build up gave me an earache which was followed by more e-mails, more waiting and then it cleared up on its own. It’s been stressful. And prolonged low level anxiety sucks. Health rollercoasters suck. I am so ready for it all to be over. Pray next week goes well for me. Thanks for following my journey.