happy mothers day, everyone. i am so thankful for my children and their spouses. in fact, my son in law helped me with setting up my blog. he and my daughter helped make this possible. i hope that i can help someone else who has thyroid cancer get some information that might help them. i do recommend anyone with thyroid cancer, or anyone who knows someone with thyroid cancer, to buy this book: Thyroid cancer, by Sara Rosenthal. ms. rosenthal is a thyroid cancer survivor herself, and she has wonderful information in this book. i read it right after my diagnosis, and it really helped inform and reassure me on some issues. i highly recommend this book.
what events led me to this point? some things you might want to know- if you have thyroid nodular disease or not, is that if you have extreme tiredness, voice changes, neck pain, that seem worse or suddenly appear, please check with your doctor. 95% of all nodules are benign, but you could be in the other 5% , like me.
first, i had an ultrasound. i had not had one in 5 years, and this one showed that my nodules had doubled in size. the thyroid hormone i was taking was supposed to shrink the nodules, or at least keep them the same size. because of this, my doctor ordered a biopsy.i had a fine needle biopsy( the needle was not fine- it hurt like hell!!) i packed an ice pack for the ride home( my doctor is 4 hours away) but i could not take any ibuprofen for 24 hours after the procedure. it is a precautionary measure to prevent bleeding. like an idiot, i went to work the next morning ( i had the biopsy done at 4pm the day before). it was truly a miserable day! do not do this- take the day off. as soon as i was able to take some ibuprofen i felt better. i had 8 samples taken, and my doctor said that all 8 tested positive for cancer. i believe she was as shocked as i was( well, almost)
so, i decided to go with the surgeon that she recommended. i would not want to go to a surgeon that has not done this procedure many times! of course, there are risks and things happen to the best of us, but the odds seem better to me. i met with the surgeon and he did an ultrasound on the lymph nodes around my thyroid and neck area. it was then that he informed me that the cancer had spread to that area. although he assures me that he thinks he can "get it all" in the surgery i can not help but worry. hopefully this will be the case, but of course,we will not know for sure until after the procedure.
i know that i will be in for some radioactive iodine treatments, whole body scans, etc, but i will just deal with it when it comes up. at this point i want to thank everyone who has been praying for me. my family, friends, co-workers, and some people i really do not even know. i do believe in the power of prayer, and i really, really appreciate all the love and consideration that i have received.
Glad you made it through that. I had the same biopsy done 2001 and didn't feel a thing. I also went to work right after with no problems at all. Maybe it was the inexperience of the person doing your biopsy. Funny thing that you mentioned getting someone experienced with thyroid nodule removal to do your surgery. I really didn't want a thyroidectomy. My biopsy came back inconclusive but the nodule was getting larger. So I went to 10 different doctors. Got 10 different opinions. Even had one doctor tell me that it would be his first thyrodectomy. And then he asked "so when do you want to schedule this"? I politely left his office and never looked back. Then found the referral to another surgeon who had done many thyroidectomys and used him. Because my biopsy was inconclusive , they just removed the part of the thyroid where the nodule was. That surgery was fine and I just had minor pain. Well they examined the nodule thoroughly and found it to be cancer. So then the very next day went back in my neck to remove the rest of the thyroid. After that second surgery the day after the first, I was in so much pain. It was like the pain tripled in intincity. Luckily it only lasted a day or two.
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