Effin Cancer

I was trying to keep my cancer blogs over on effin' cancer but I find that it's just more bother than it's worth. I named this food.craft.life. for a reason and these posts definitely fall under the life catagory.

In other words, I'm moving over some old posts I originally made on my other blog. I will try to put them in on their original dates. Pardon the dust while things get rearranged!

Waiting for invisibility

RAI isolation day two. Despite expecting several side effects like sore throat, dry mouth, etc I have had an easy go of it. Maybe a little throat tenderness but that could be from the tail end of my cold.

When I first started researching the RAI treatment I was really concerned about the potential risk of cancer (ironic, right?). Though it is a great way to treat thyroid cancer, there is a slightly elevated risk of leukemia. Awesome. Thankfully, the nuclear med doc said that risk is less than 1% and with the new shots and dosing, probably even less.

Now my biggest concern is getting the results of my whole body scan that happens next week. They can check to see where the radioactivity is to see where the cancer cells are. Now intellectually I trust my surgeon who said there was no evidence of further spreading. But emotionally I feel like if it was already in 1/4 of my lymph nodes, my thyroid, and in a 3cm mass that had been there for several years...then it's possible for it to be elsewhere. Trying not to worry about it as that achieves nothing until we get results.

My isolation activities yesterday included rereading Eclipse, reading the new Eclipse novella, watching How to Train Your Dragon, starting a new book, playing computer games, and blogging. Whee.

25 hours down, 47 to go!

Waiting for superpowers, day one

Ah, radioactivity. Usually something people try to avoid for fears of cancer and yet here I am, using it to treat cancer. I can't complain too much, after all very few cancers have a magic bullet such as this.

From what I understand, thyroid (and therefore papillary thyroid cancer) cells are unique in that they absorb iodine. Despite my surgeon's amazing job of clearing out my thyroid and lymph nodes, there is always some microscopic debris left behind. By hiding the radiation in iodine, the cancer cells will suck it up and then die. I picture the radioactive iodine (I-131) as Elmer Fudd and the cancer cells as wascally wabbits. And Elmer, he is a hunting!

On Wednesday and Thursday I received Thyrogen shots to stimulate what thyroid cells were left. This morning I got to swallow a non-descriptor grey capsule, carried to the room in a serious looking thermos. Were I ever to go looking for scary chemicals in a Bond villain's lair, I would look for something like that! Somehow the Thyrogen shots make the cells "hungry," so they suck up as much of the I-131 as possible.

This has several benefits...1) I didn't have to stop my thyroid meeds and go more hypothyroid (and therefore more tired than I already am) 2)I didn't have to go on a low iodine diet. I researched it and it didn't look tasty. And 3) it means a smaller dose is as effective as a larger one, reducing longterm risk. I might have needed twice as much, leading to potential hospitalization. In a lead lined room and a slight risk for different cancers in the future. That risk is even less this way, yay!

So far I am not noticing any side effects, except boredom. Thank goodness for gadgets, the internet, and cheap books!

Will update again tomorrow regarding side effects, insights, and boredom. :)

"Good" cancer

Despite the pain I'm in right now, post-thyroidectemy and neck dissection, I am still having a hard time grasping that I have cancer. After seeing the struggle my Dad went through, the symptoms before his diagnosis and the side effects after, I feel like I'm cheating. I had no symptoms and my treatment should be pretty straight forward now that the big surgery is done. Surely having cancer is meant to be awful?

Don't get me wrong, I feel very lucky knowing that I won't go through what he did. But maybe that's why I'm having trouble with all of this. I feel lucky. I have cancer and I still feel lucky. Part of me wants to have the typical feelings of fear, anger, and sadness - and I do occasionally. But everything in life is relative and relative to what cancer has already taken from me, this doesn't seem like such a big deal.

If anything, I'm angry that cancer has already stripped me so bare that I can't even summon up the feelings I should have about my own diagnosis because I used them all up for Dad's.

tl;dr (Too long, didn't read)

For those who want the concise timeline, here you go. Yes, I can do concise, I just don't do it well.

March 11 - Urgent care visit for fever, chest xray done

March 12 - Call telling me about 3cm lesion/mass in right lung

March 18 - CT scan, turns out mass is near lung but not in it

March 25 - Fine needle aspiration biopsy find necrotic debris

April 1 - Meet with ENT about neck dissection

April 5 - Biopsy 2.0 and bloodwork, still just necrotic debris

April 14 - Surgery to remove mass and biopsy it

April 16 - Results from pathology show Papillary Thyroid Cancer

Cancer Timeline

I can't believe how fast this has all happened, nor what a fluke it was. So here is the timeline of my cancer diagnosis. Yes, this will become a novel. I apologize up front for that and will try to post a condensed version as well.

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.