Sunday, March 6, 2011
Dear Kendal...
Hi dear. let me just say I was sooo happy to hear from you and everyone. this is exactly why i'm writing this blog. i am extremely sorry to hear you're going through the same thing. I am also 26 and its really hard to face the "C" word so young. i would love to answer your questions. it was really weird how i found out actually. i was at work and i had a cold, i was rubbing my sore throat and felt a big lump. i felt other people's throats and realized it was out of place and shouldn't be there. I went to urgent care after work and that doctor reffered me to an ENT surgeon. I went the next week and they said i needed an ultrasound. Within a couple days they did the ultrasound and saw that it was a half solid half liquid mass that was 2.5 cm. The doctor said they could do a needle biopsy but due to the inconsistency of the tumor it wouldn't be 100% accurate. I opted to just have it removed and tested for 100% results. two weeks later when i was laying on the hospital bed getting prepped for surgery they told me they were going to test the tumor during surgery and if it was malignant then they would do a total thyroidectomy. this was news to me! i didnt know if after they put me to sleep if i would wake up with a thyroid or not. turns out i'm in recovery in and out of sleep and i remember the surgeon standing over me telling me he was sorry and that it was cancer and they had to remove my thyroid. i knew at that moment my life had changed. i am actually surprised you havent done the RAI treatment yet. they told me everyone has to get it to destroy any remains of thyroid tissue in the body. from this point on all thyroid tissue is considered cancerous. they immedietly started scheduling me with my endocrinologist and my radiation in Seattle. I had my surgery June 6th and began radiation September 7th. They try to give you a few months to adjust to your pills before they pull you off of them to prep you for radiation. i still have yet to regulate my pills. i am on 225 mcg of synthroid and 3/5mcg cytomels a day and my tsh is still in the upper 20's. its crappy but i know we will be okay. Keep me posted about what's going on with you and let me know if you have more questions for me.
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Thank you so much for this, Sierra. It's tremendously comforting to hear your story. GOOD FOR YOU for finding the lump in your throat and doing something about it right away. Talk about being aware of your body - keep that up! And wow - I can't believe you learned about the cancer right after the surgery was finished. That's a lot of emotions to go through in one day! My experience was actually a bit different from yours.
ReplyDeleteI didn't feel any lumps myself. I was seeing my gynecologist for a yearly checkup, and during a routine exam of my neck, she felt some nodules on my thyroid gland. It was really hard for me to feel them myself, but she could tell they were there! She sent me to an endocrinologist, and he did an ultrasound. The nodules were small enough where we didn't have to worry about anything quite yet. So I saw him every few months for the following year, and he monitored the nodule size with ultrasounds. Throughout all of this, he put me on Synthroid because my TSH levels were out of whack, and we discovered that I had Hashimoto's disease. But everything was relatively fine until one day he noticed that the nodules (on both sides of my neck) had gotten bigger than 1cm - that's when a biopsy is needed. I had a fine needle biopsy done (totally unpleasant experience...they jab large needles in your neck when you're fully awake...be happy you escaped that!), and the tests came back showing that cancer cells were present. I had my total thyroidectomy back in November and they tested the removed gland again to see the frequency of cancer cells and whether or not they spread to the surrounding lymph nodes. According to the tests, there wasn't any apparent spreading, and all the cancer cells seemed to be gone. So that's why they didn't opt for the RAI treatment. It makes me a bit nervous that everything wasn't nipped in the bud, but I'm trusting their opinion. I'll continue to see my endocrinologist every six months for blood tests and ultrasound followups. Right now I'm only on 150 mcg of Synthroid, but we're still balancing out my levels. It's been an interesting ride, but let me tell you...it could be MUCH worse. Every doctor I saw said that out of all the cancers to get, Thyroid cancer is the "best one." So we're lucky ladies...let's keep it that way. ;)
A thyroid is a small organ but it has a great role. Diseases like hypothyroidism can be alarming but it can be cured with natural thyroid .
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