Monday, December 5, 2011

I have thyroid cancer

For some reason my insurance company had a thing where if you go get a physical they’d give you money. So on the day of the deadline we remembered this and were like, “uhhhh… let’s go get physicals and get money” and called all the doctors and got an appointment.



I went in all frazzled with a tiny new baby and the doctor (who was awesome, btw, he turned off the lights and let me keep my white noise app going for the whole appt so the baby would sleep in a moby) felt my neck and said he felt a lump on my thyroid and I should have it checked out.
So I got an ultrasound and went and talked to an endocrinologist who said it was probably a postpartum thing and we’d check to see if it went away on its own in a couple months. And so they scheduled a biopsy for a couple months later which was last week and the biopsy person was like, “We’ll just take some tissue from this big nodule on the left. And what the heck, there’s a tiny nodule on the right, let’s get some from there, too.” Turns out the tiny one on the right is cancerous.
Papillary thyroid cancer. Apparently it's not too uncommon and is "very treatable." I have to have my thyroid taken out tomorrow. If they don't think they were able to get it all, I will need to take radioactive iodine to kill off the rest of the thyroid cells. This will really suck. I will have to stop breastfeeding because if I am lactating the radiation be stuck in my boobs forevar! Radioactive boobs! Not as cool as it sounds. Then I will have to eat an iodine free diet for a couple weeks (what the heck do I eat?). Then I will take the radioactive iodine and I won't be able to be within a few feet of anyone for several days, and not around Audrey for at least a week. And pretty much anything I touch will have to be thrown out or something. Yep. If I am knitting, it will be radioactive knitting. How's that for ya? (ok, that's not really how science works, but they make you get rid of everything anyway.)

So yeah. I'm really really hoping my surgery tomorrow goes well and we'll be able to go home for Audrey's first Christmas. My mom is here helping out for the week, so that is good. 

Ugh.