It’s been a while, but I want the world to know that I am alive and well. I considered for a moment deleting my blog, but then I decided that I need this blog to keep me sane. I’m going to give an update on our life, but then I’d like to no longer blog about cancer, unless anything new happens. Frankly, I’m over it…the whole cancer thing.
On February 22, I had a complete thyroidectomy to remove my cancerous thyroid. After surgery when we got the pathology report back we found out that it WAS papillary carcinoma, that it was 1.5 cm in size, and that it had not spread. yay! This was the best news I’d had in, well, all my life.
The next month I took a capsule dose of radioactive iodine to destroy any remaining microscopic thyroid cells that might be in my body. Since it was clear my thyroid cells were more prone to developing cancer, we wanted to eradicate any that were hanging out.
This was not the easiest decision for me to make. My endocrinologist really wanted me to do it. But he told me that some doctors would say I was cured after surgery, and that we didn’t need to go any further with treatment. He disagreed. He said that he wanted to ensure we destroyed any cells remaining. I knew, to keep my sanity, that I had to take the dosage of radioactive iodine. Otherwise, I would have always wondered, “Did we get everything? What if there are some cells left just waiting for the chance to start growing a tumor?” Yeah, I’m the type of person who thinks things like that. So yeah, I had to do it.
Let me just say that taking that pill was the most science fiction thing ever. A gloved nurse brought in a steel container, which he opened and sat down next to me with a glass of water. In the steel container was another sealed tube that had the capsule in it. He gave me a pair of gloves and said he would step out into the hall, and I was to open the container and dump the pill into my mouth. Do NOT touch it. It was navy blue, and for the brief moment it sat on my tongue, it tasted like a battery. You know, have you ever stuck your tongue to a battery? It was like that. I sat there in the room for 10 minutes, and then he came in with something he called a “cutie,” which was basically a Geiger counter, to test how radioactive I was. Wow. When I was suffieciently radioactive, he sent me home with instructions to stay at least six feet at all times from women and children, babies and animals, and to stay in a separate room from my husband, eat off of separate dishes, use a separate bathroom, and either throw my clothes away or hold them for a week and then wash them separately. I was to drink lots of water and pee a lot to get the radioactivity out of my body.
All the while, those dastardly cells would be ablating. I had heartburn. I was slightly nauseous. Two mornings I woke up with no voice. But after a week of seclusion and a full-body scan to make sure the radioactive iodine had done its job, I was free to live as normal.
I take Synthroid every morning to replace the hormones my thyroid produced. I feel fine, but I’m more tired than I was before. Tomorrow is my three-month checkup, and I’m hoping they say I need my dosage bumped up a bit. That would at least explain why I’m so tired and unable to concentrate.
Anyhow, I’m going to try and make this the last cancer-focused blog post, I promise. It just helps me to get it out there.
