Anniversary
I just celebrated 2 anniversaries recently. Hans thinks it's odd that I remember the dates, but he doesn't grasp that I cling to dates. I remember all sorts of dates - the date that we met, the date that I found out I was pregnant with Aliceon, the date I found out I was pregnant with Heather. Other dates that aren't so happy.
July 19, 2006 - I got a call from my endocrinologist asking me to come in right away. This was a Tuesday, and I had had a fine needle aspiration biopsy the previous Friday. I had been told to expect results in a couple of weeks, so for them to call at 2 on Tuesday afternoon and ask if I can come in that afternoon, I knew the news was bad. I knew. And it was. Hans and I sat in an exam room and got the news that no one wants - I had cancer. Regardless of the fact that there was only a 1% chance of my nodules coming back inconclusively cancerous, there it was. I beat the stats, but in the wrong direction.
July 30, 2006 - I sat in a pre-op room in Florida Hospital Altamonte awaiting removal of my thyroid. It was a fairly simple procedure, technically outpatient, even though my surgeon routinely keeps his patients the full 23 hours insurance companies allow. Not only were all the nodules on my thyroid malignant, but there was invasive metastasis to 6 of my 10 central compartment lymph nodes and one of my parathyroid glands. So now I walk around minus a thyroid, 2 parathyroids and 10 central compartment lymph nodes. Not the worst news - I can still speak because there wasn't a whole lot of vocal chord involvement that caused them to cut my chords, and my scar is so slight that most people, Hans and myself included, have to actually look to see it.
It's been 2 years. Some think that I should be "over it." Most don't understand that I still wake up in a cold sweat out of fear. Fear of when, not if, I have to deal with cancer attacking my body again. Some think that it's pessimistic to talk about how my cancer is either going to come back, or how I'm expected to have lymphoma, leukemia and/or breast cancer at some point in the next 15 years or so. It's not pessimism, though, it's realism. It's what the doctors have told me to expect. Between the links between thyroid cancer at a young age (and believe it or not, this is considered a young age!!) and other cancers, the percentages that the treatments for thyroid cancer increase risk of these other cancers, and the fact that having rheumatoid arthritis (another lovely side effect of the treatments for me) increases risk of those same cancers, as does the use of the RA treatments, and yeah, the deck's stacked against me. Besides, we've already seen that I'm not good with odds. There's a logical reason that I don't gamble.
I'm not sure, at this point in my life, how I feel about all of it. Right now, because of the cancer, the RA, and all the other things that have happened constantly over the last 12 years or so, I'm just begging for a year of uneventfulness. Hopefully I'll get it - I don't have to have another scan till November 2009. If I could just have some time where nothing bad happens to me or anyone I care deeply for, that would be awesome. I'm not expecting it, though, because, well, let's face it - I haven't gone a full year without something terrible since 7th grade. I really don't expect things to change. I just wish they could.
And people wonder why my faith and belief in religion is gone. But that's another topic altogether.
July 19, 2006 - I got a call from my endocrinologist asking me to come in right away. This was a Tuesday, and I had had a fine needle aspiration biopsy the previous Friday. I had been told to expect results in a couple of weeks, so for them to call at 2 on Tuesday afternoon and ask if I can come in that afternoon, I knew the news was bad. I knew. And it was. Hans and I sat in an exam room and got the news that no one wants - I had cancer. Regardless of the fact that there was only a 1% chance of my nodules coming back inconclusively cancerous, there it was. I beat the stats, but in the wrong direction.
July 30, 2006 - I sat in a pre-op room in Florida Hospital Altamonte awaiting removal of my thyroid. It was a fairly simple procedure, technically outpatient, even though my surgeon routinely keeps his patients the full 23 hours insurance companies allow. Not only were all the nodules on my thyroid malignant, but there was invasive metastasis to 6 of my 10 central compartment lymph nodes and one of my parathyroid glands. So now I walk around minus a thyroid, 2 parathyroids and 10 central compartment lymph nodes. Not the worst news - I can still speak because there wasn't a whole lot of vocal chord involvement that caused them to cut my chords, and my scar is so slight that most people, Hans and myself included, have to actually look to see it.
It's been 2 years. Some think that I should be "over it." Most don't understand that I still wake up in a cold sweat out of fear. Fear of when, not if, I have to deal with cancer attacking my body again. Some think that it's pessimistic to talk about how my cancer is either going to come back, or how I'm expected to have lymphoma, leukemia and/or breast cancer at some point in the next 15 years or so. It's not pessimism, though, it's realism. It's what the doctors have told me to expect. Between the links between thyroid cancer at a young age (and believe it or not, this is considered a young age!!) and other cancers, the percentages that the treatments for thyroid cancer increase risk of these other cancers, and the fact that having rheumatoid arthritis (another lovely side effect of the treatments for me) increases risk of those same cancers, as does the use of the RA treatments, and yeah, the deck's stacked against me. Besides, we've already seen that I'm not good with odds. There's a logical reason that I don't gamble.
I'm not sure, at this point in my life, how I feel about all of it. Right now, because of the cancer, the RA, and all the other things that have happened constantly over the last 12 years or so, I'm just begging for a year of uneventfulness. Hopefully I'll get it - I don't have to have another scan till November 2009. If I could just have some time where nothing bad happens to me or anyone I care deeply for, that would be awesome. I'm not expecting it, though, because, well, let's face it - I haven't gone a full year without something terrible since 7th grade. I really don't expect things to change. I just wish they could.
And people wonder why my faith and belief in religion is gone. But that's another topic altogether.