February 1-28 - At the last minute, I take over the place of my Mom's travel companion on a month long trip to Tanzania. We spend most of the time working at Peace House, helping to set up their library. We also take a couple of safaris. Amazing - trip of a lifetime!
March 11th - First, I slip and fall at work. No big deal but I stop by urgent care just to get checked out. Always a good choice when dealing with worker's comp. Then I go home and lie down, being a bit sore from my sudden encounter with the floor. Despite being in a warm room, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and under a down comforter, I can't get warm. Looks like a slight fever of 100.6 or so. We call the nurse line and explain the recent travel and they say to go to urgent care to be safe. Malaria is very treatable if caught quickly so it's better to be safe than sorry.
Off we go to urgent care - again - and now my temp is 101.9. Eeep. They do the bloodwork for malaria and also a chest xray to rule out pneumonia. Other than the temp, it's hard to tell what might be new symptoms and what is just achiness from the fall. Get sent home with orders to rest and take Tylenol.
March 12th - Already feel better and go in to work. On my first break there is a call from the clinic asking me to call back about "something odd on the chest xray." Say whaaaaat? I reach one of the doctors and apparently there is a 3cm lesion or mass in the very top of my lung. Awesome. Could be left from an old infection, could be TB, who knows. Next step is probably a CT scan.
March 15th - Meet with my primary care doctor, Dr. T, who tells me these incidentalomas are usually nothing. I actually think she's making up the word "incidentaloma" until I get home and google it. She's more concerned about the radiation from the CT scan than she is the results but I'm scheduled for the scan just to put the issue to rest.
March 18th - CT scan. The contrast medium feels so weird. Nurse Jackie (yes, really!) tells me it might feel like I've peed myself, but I haven't. She's right. It's surreal. I'm told that the radiologist will take a look at it and talk to my doctor. Odds are if it's nothing, she'll call me the next day. If they see anything, she'll call today.
I spend the rest of the day willing the phone not to ring. I fail. Dr. T calls and says there are some enlarged lymph nodes in the neck. In my panic over the lymph nodes I spend a week believing that I now have a lump in my lungs and stuff in my neck. This can't be good. Get scheduled for a fine needle aspiration biopsy the next Thursday. Lung biopsy. Awesome. Continue to lose sleep.
March 25th - Head in for the biopsy, expecting then to stick a needle in my lung. Turns out the first xray was wrong, the 3cm mass is right above my lung, not in it. That seems like good news...I hope. A bit of pain from the lidocaine shot, then quite numb while they stick a needle in my neck several times. MUCH better than what I was expecting. So far they say the tissue looks pretty dead, I shouldn't have much to worry about. Whew!
March 30th - Talk to Dr. T about biopsy results. Apparently necrotic tissue is still non-diagnostic. Blargh, aren't we done already? She thinks we'll have to cut open my neck and take a proper look. The calcification around the mass is making it hard to see what's going on. I'm set up with an ENT appointment.
April 1st - Head to ENT appointment with Dr. M expecting a quick consult before scheduling surgery for neck dissection. Wait a second....dissections are what you do to dead frogs in biology class! I'm not dead and I'm not a frog. As for the quick consult - April Fool's! I get awful numbing stuff sprayed in my nose and then a scope stuck through it and down my throat. Next year, I'll just take the exploding can of peanuts please.
Dr. M wants to try one more biopsy of the thyroid and lymph nodes before we try surgery. Last biopsy was easy so hey, why not. If it might prevent me from being dissected, I'll give it a go.
April 5th - Biopsy 2.0. Things don't go as smoothly from the get go. On ultrasound, the doc can't find anything on my thyroid to biopsy and the shadow from the big mass is blocking my lymph nodes. Maybe a CT biopsy? Wheeeee. I head over to the CT lab where we get set up again. Because he's trying to get different samples than the first biopsy, it's not as easy or as painless this time. He's going deeper than the lidocaine seems to work and at one point is actually trying to hammer the needle through the calcification. Starting to wish we had skipped this step and gone straight to surgery. Too late now!
April 9th - Get a call from the ENT, Dr. M, and find out that they still just got non-diagnostic necrotic tissue. Well, frick. Surgery seems inevitable. I ask if this is all really necessary, I mean, I have no symptoms and the thing was found by accident. If it's not causing problems, can't we go with the wait a bit and keep an eye on it procedure? He feels strongly that I simply shouldn't have a 3cm mass in my neck and it's important to figure out what it is and why it's there. Damn doctors and their damn logic. Surgery is scheduled for the 14th. Woah fast.
April 14th - Surgery. Dr. M says they will try to remove the mass but because it's so low and deep, he's not sure they can without doing more harm than it's worth. I get the lovely spiel about all the risks to my nerves, muscles, voicebox, etc. I see Rich crossing his fingers when doc mentions the slight risk of not being able to speak for a while. He's a jerk.
Get rolled in to OR and told to think a happy thought while the anesthetic does it's magic. Being late in the day without any food or drink, my happy thought is my iced double tall two-pump-vanilla whole milk latte. Pretty sad, eh? Wake up a while later in the post-op recovery area feeling remarkably good...for about two minutes. Then I become conscious of the pain on my neck, especially when I swallow. More drugs and some ice, yay!
Dr. M comes to talk to me. They got the mass out and apparently it was so hard, you could've played golf with it. Am kind of sad they took it away. :( Pathology will apparently take several days so I have to focus on recovering, not result. Nurse works on finding me a room for the night and Rich is allowed in to say hi.
Get settled in my room, am still pretty out of it but that is probably for the best. Mom comes to visit, I get some clear liquids for dinner (green jello makes everything better), and then I'm ready to pass out so everyone clears out.
Was a rough night, lack of food and coffee seems to bring about a migraine and some nausea. Am sooooo glad I wasn't sent home. In the morning they decide my drain isn't ready to come out yet so I'm sent home with it in and instructions to see Dr. M on Friday. (Apparently the body hates a void so if you remove something, it tries to fill it - hence the drain.)
April 16th - Rich has to work so Mom drives me to Dr. M's Plymouth office for the drain removal. It's weird but not painful. Then he hits me with the news that my path lab report is back. Despite all my bloodwork coming back normal, apparently I have Papillary Thyroid Cancer. Well, shit. I call Mom in to hear some of the news about what is next and we buckle down for another round of our family vs. stupid effin' cancer.
That pretty much sums up the past, I'll save the "coming soon" for another post.
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