A parenthesis opens
Last night I had a dream about flying. That's always pleasant.
So, here's what happened. I'll start on December 30th.
It was late at night, possibly around 11 or 12, that I felt a strange tugging pain in my neck. I assumed at the time that this was because of sitting on the sofa in various positions with a laptop all day; I'm the kind of person who can't stay put very long so I squirm all over the place, sit upside down, drape myself over the edge, and naturally this usually results in various body aches. No big deal, I thought, I just strained something, I'll go to bed early and tomorrow I'll feel better.
I woke up the next morning feeling a little better. The tugging pain was gone, but I noticed sharp jabs around the base of my neck if I moved my head too brusquely. That was when I knew something was definitely wrong. I poked around the area and found a lump, just on the left side of my trachea, that hurt much in the same way if I poked it. That's not supposed to be there, I thought, and pointed it out to my dad, who gave me some painkillers.
This being December 31st, it was New Year's Eve, and so my mom came to pick us up to go to the movies (we watched "Nowhere Boy") before dropping us off at home to get dressed for the party at my grandma's house. So I told her too, "my neck hurts, there's something weird going on." She kept talking about it as if it were a sore throat, and I had to correct her several times, "It's not pain in my throat, it's pain near my throat!"
That pain persisted the whole day, but we didn't do anything besides the painkillers. Things slowly got worse. Soon I had pain whenever I swallowed, and then pain whenever I laughed. Still my mom thought it was a sore throat but I gave up arguing.
January 2nd, mom moved to São Paulo. My dad started calling up people and asking around for a doctor. He called two family friends who are doctors; The first said she thought it was mono. When my dad told me this I said "There's no way this is mono."
"The doctor said so," he said.
I pointed out the fact that I had no fever or fatigue or anything of the sort. The second doctor didn't provide any clearer answer, but said she thought it wasn't the thyroid. My dad explained about my recent allergic reaction during the trip to Venezuela, and she suggested it might be inflamed lymph nodes and recommended anti-inflammatories.
My dad went to a pharmacy and got me some anti-inflammatories, which actually did away with the pain completely, but the lump was still there. We tried going to an ER but it was chock full of people and since my case wasn't an emergency it would take hours and hours for me to be seen.
At this point, I think, was when my mom called from São Paulo- first she talked to my dad, and apparently she read in the in-flight magazine about thyroid cancer and was all freaked out like mothers get, and my dad said no, Dr. Janine said it's not the thyroid, and I'm like, "Dad, you talked to Janine over the phone, you can't know for sure." Anyway, my mom forbid me to return from Brazil as planned. Goodbye, college.
Eventually we managed to get an appointment with Dr. Zica for January 5th. Dr. Zica is a brother of my uncle Alemão. It was then that I found out that Alemão is not his real name, but a nickname; his real name is Erimar. Zica is also a nickname, his real name being Eliomar. Anyway, I went in to see him in his office on the fifth floor of an old building near Rua das Flores. Although I had only met him once, when I was one year old, he felt very trustworthy. He calmly listened to what I had to tell him, then conducted me to the next room for an ultrasound.
Dr. Eliomar is actually a gynecologist/obstetrician, but since he's a family friend and most doctors are on vacation for the first week of January, we took what we got. The session lasted a good while, probably around an hour, and I turned my head around to watch the monitor as he prodded around and made notes of what he found.
"This white area here is your thyroid," he said, motioning at the screen. "And these black areas are nodules." Everyone in a while, as he passed the ultrasound wand over, a large black blob would appear on the screen. He froze the image and made notes. Some like "THYROID LEFT LOBE NODULE". In one particular instance there were so many blobs on the screen he simply abbreviated them all as "N" when he wrote the notes. It looked like, "THYROID L N N N N N N CAROTID ARTERY."
He turned on something that made red and yellow splotches on the screen. I assumed this meant blood flow (and asking him later, I was right). That's when I got a really bad feeling, because the only areas on the screen lighting up were my carotid artery and the blobs.
Exam done, he scheduled me for biopsies the next day. Just the thought of having to get needles stuck in my throat made me nauseous. I absolutely HATE anything touching my throat- I never wear turtlenecks, and I only wear scarves very loosely. Bottom line, no one touches my neck unless absolutely necessary.
So, biopsies. I got there quite nervous. Eliomar at first applied some sort of anaesthetic cream and put a bandage over it. He said I had to wait an hour for the cream to take effect, so in that meantime I went out for lunch. After I got back, he told me, before we began, that I could possibly leak blood or other things so I could take off my shirt if I wanted to and he'd give me a hospital gown. I accepted and changed in the bathroom. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt hideous.
Eliomar sat first on my right side, where the ultrasound machine was. I lied down and he did the ultrasound exam, poking around until he found a suitable place for a needle, then moved over to the left side of the bed, prodded around, picked up the wand from the other side, looked around some more, then FINALLY inserted the needle. It was that awkward pressure of a regular needle poke... until he aspirated, and then it hurt like a bitch!!
He did this three more times, and inserted the needle a fourth time, but couldn't reach the nodule, so he pulled it out without taking a sample. Once the biopsies were done, he said I could get up and get changed now. But I felt horribly dizzy, I couldn't even sit up from the bed. He didn't seem too worried but he took my blood pressure anyway, and it was normal (although slightly below what my usual is). It took several minutes until I was comfortable enough to get up, and then I collapsed on the seat in the waiting room while my dad paid for the biopsies. Then my dad gave me a lollipop and that made me feel better (when I'm nervous-dizzy, sugar is always good).
After that, we took the biopsy slides to the lab (since Eliomar couldn't do so himself). I felt really ill and sprawled myself on the backseat of the car. After that... I don't even remember what happened, but my neck was swollen and painful and I think I fell asleep much earlier than usual... but all of this by now was quite a blur.
The next day I woke up early for blood tests. I was falling apart with hunger, but the tests required fasting, so I endured it. The nurse took six vials of blood for a total of fourteen tests. Then because I was so hungry, we went to have lunch, I don't even remember where. In the afternoon, I baked a chocolate cake. After baking it we left it to cool and went to pick up the biopsy results at the lab.
I stayed in the car. My dad took a really long time to come out of the lab. I was starting to worry, when he finally came out. Watching him from the back seat, I saw him call someone on his cellphone. When he got in the car, he said we needed to go back to Eliomar's office. So we did.
We sat in the waiting room, waiting for his previous exam to be done. I was sitting right by the tea thermos, so I had a cup- chamomile tea with lots of sugar. The same my elementary school gave to sick kids, something I always associated with comfort. I felt slightly less nervous drinking it, but still.
Eliomar called us in. We sat in the black leather chairs by his desk. He took the folder and flipped it open, nodding, making hmm and haa noises, turning his head this way and that and then... "Yes, it is what it seems. These are tumours." I stared at him, expecting some. "The most appropriate course of action in this case is surgery."
I don't know if I could even describe what I felt then. I think the closest I can get is what I read in xlormp once... or close to it: My stomach felt like it fell to the floor and from then on I was walking on my stomach. It was horrible. I can't stand to think of it.
I was in a daze from then on as my dad directed me around. We went to the supermarket to pick up cake icing and I felt damn shitty. At home Cynthia asked if I wanted to help her with the icing but I just kind of collapsed on the sofa. My brother came out of the room to ask my dad what happened as I sat there utterly stunned. Then he came to sit next to me. He said lots of inane things, about videogames and stuff, but I know that's his way of showing he cares.
Not long afterwards, my mom arrived, having flown over from São Paulo. She hugged me and kissed me and told me it would all be all right and all those typical mother things. She told me to cry and I lied on her lap and barely managed a few tears. Then she told me that practically everyone she talked to in São Paulo knew someone who had thyroid cancer. "They're all fine!" she said. I didn't really want to hear about it but I was too tired to say anything.
Then we ate cake. It was delicious. My mom promised she would take me to see Megamind again.
This morning I woke up with a headache, although I felt it was mostly hunger. I got a call from my mom, she was coughing pretty bad. Because of this cold she said she wouldn't take me to the movies. Okay.
TL;DR I have like 8 tumours that need surgery, I have to drop out of college for a while, and have to take pills for the rest of my life.
Well this was all damn shitty news yesterday but today I feel much better. Happy even! Joyful! Why? 'cause my dad took me to see Tangled (dubbed in Portuguese but I don't give a damn). I really love animation, I really, really do. And I was so happy after this movie I practically danced all the way back home- I could have burst out singing in the middle of the mall, I was so elated. When I got home my aunt/godmother (who has been messaging me all week, with each step of the way) messaged me on skype and just said generally supportive things and I couldn't help gushing to her about how happy I was and I ended up bursting with, "I want to get better soon so that I can make movies that will make people happy like this!"
And she says, "If that's the case I'll pay for you to go to the movies every day until the doctor says you're healthy enough to go back to the States. But only if they're good movies!"
I asked, if I could rent movies instead if there weren't any good ones in theaters. And she said yes, but no wasting money on crappy movies.
So yeah, even if this is exaggerated godmother talk, I'm just... blissful. I feel this is a little ridiculous for someone who just found out she has cancer, but damn if I won't take the opportunity to feel gleeful.
Anyway that's my story.
So, here's what happened. I'll start on December 30th.
It was late at night, possibly around 11 or 12, that I felt a strange tugging pain in my neck. I assumed at the time that this was because of sitting on the sofa in various positions with a laptop all day; I'm the kind of person who can't stay put very long so I squirm all over the place, sit upside down, drape myself over the edge, and naturally this usually results in various body aches. No big deal, I thought, I just strained something, I'll go to bed early and tomorrow I'll feel better.
I woke up the next morning feeling a little better. The tugging pain was gone, but I noticed sharp jabs around the base of my neck if I moved my head too brusquely. That was when I knew something was definitely wrong. I poked around the area and found a lump, just on the left side of my trachea, that hurt much in the same way if I poked it. That's not supposed to be there, I thought, and pointed it out to my dad, who gave me some painkillers.
This being December 31st, it was New Year's Eve, and so my mom came to pick us up to go to the movies (we watched "Nowhere Boy") before dropping us off at home to get dressed for the party at my grandma's house. So I told her too, "my neck hurts, there's something weird going on." She kept talking about it as if it were a sore throat, and I had to correct her several times, "It's not pain in my throat, it's pain near my throat!"
That pain persisted the whole day, but we didn't do anything besides the painkillers. Things slowly got worse. Soon I had pain whenever I swallowed, and then pain whenever I laughed. Still my mom thought it was a sore throat but I gave up arguing.
January 2nd, mom moved to São Paulo. My dad started calling up people and asking around for a doctor. He called two family friends who are doctors; The first said she thought it was mono. When my dad told me this I said "There's no way this is mono."
"The doctor said so," he said.
I pointed out the fact that I had no fever or fatigue or anything of the sort. The second doctor didn't provide any clearer answer, but said she thought it wasn't the thyroid. My dad explained about my recent allergic reaction during the trip to Venezuela, and she suggested it might be inflamed lymph nodes and recommended anti-inflammatories.
My dad went to a pharmacy and got me some anti-inflammatories, which actually did away with the pain completely, but the lump was still there. We tried going to an ER but it was chock full of people and since my case wasn't an emergency it would take hours and hours for me to be seen.
At this point, I think, was when my mom called from São Paulo- first she talked to my dad, and apparently she read in the in-flight magazine about thyroid cancer and was all freaked out like mothers get, and my dad said no, Dr. Janine said it's not the thyroid, and I'm like, "Dad, you talked to Janine over the phone, you can't know for sure." Anyway, my mom forbid me to return from Brazil as planned. Goodbye, college.
Eventually we managed to get an appointment with Dr. Zica for January 5th. Dr. Zica is a brother of my uncle Alemão. It was then that I found out that Alemão is not his real name, but a nickname; his real name is Erimar. Zica is also a nickname, his real name being Eliomar. Anyway, I went in to see him in his office on the fifth floor of an old building near Rua das Flores. Although I had only met him once, when I was one year old, he felt very trustworthy. He calmly listened to what I had to tell him, then conducted me to the next room for an ultrasound.
Dr. Eliomar is actually a gynecologist/obstetrician, but since he's a family friend and most doctors are on vacation for the first week of January, we took what we got. The session lasted a good while, probably around an hour, and I turned my head around to watch the monitor as he prodded around and made notes of what he found.
"This white area here is your thyroid," he said, motioning at the screen. "And these black areas are nodules." Everyone in a while, as he passed the ultrasound wand over, a large black blob would appear on the screen. He froze the image and made notes. Some like "THYROID LEFT LOBE NODULE". In one particular instance there were so many blobs on the screen he simply abbreviated them all as "N" when he wrote the notes. It looked like, "THYROID L N N N N N N CAROTID ARTERY."
He turned on something that made red and yellow splotches on the screen. I assumed this meant blood flow (and asking him later, I was right). That's when I got a really bad feeling, because the only areas on the screen lighting up were my carotid artery and the blobs.
Exam done, he scheduled me for biopsies the next day. Just the thought of having to get needles stuck in my throat made me nauseous. I absolutely HATE anything touching my throat- I never wear turtlenecks, and I only wear scarves very loosely. Bottom line, no one touches my neck unless absolutely necessary.
So, biopsies. I got there quite nervous. Eliomar at first applied some sort of anaesthetic cream and put a bandage over it. He said I had to wait an hour for the cream to take effect, so in that meantime I went out for lunch. After I got back, he told me, before we began, that I could possibly leak blood or other things so I could take off my shirt if I wanted to and he'd give me a hospital gown. I accepted and changed in the bathroom. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt hideous.
Eliomar sat first on my right side, where the ultrasound machine was. I lied down and he did the ultrasound exam, poking around until he found a suitable place for a needle, then moved over to the left side of the bed, prodded around, picked up the wand from the other side, looked around some more, then FINALLY inserted the needle. It was that awkward pressure of a regular needle poke... until he aspirated, and then it hurt like a bitch!!
He did this three more times, and inserted the needle a fourth time, but couldn't reach the nodule, so he pulled it out without taking a sample. Once the biopsies were done, he said I could get up and get changed now. But I felt horribly dizzy, I couldn't even sit up from the bed. He didn't seem too worried but he took my blood pressure anyway, and it was normal (although slightly below what my usual is). It took several minutes until I was comfortable enough to get up, and then I collapsed on the seat in the waiting room while my dad paid for the biopsies. Then my dad gave me a lollipop and that made me feel better (when I'm nervous-dizzy, sugar is always good).
After that, we took the biopsy slides to the lab (since Eliomar couldn't do so himself). I felt really ill and sprawled myself on the backseat of the car. After that... I don't even remember what happened, but my neck was swollen and painful and I think I fell asleep much earlier than usual... but all of this by now was quite a blur.
The next day I woke up early for blood tests. I was falling apart with hunger, but the tests required fasting, so I endured it. The nurse took six vials of blood for a total of fourteen tests. Then because I was so hungry, we went to have lunch, I don't even remember where. In the afternoon, I baked a chocolate cake. After baking it we left it to cool and went to pick up the biopsy results at the lab.
I stayed in the car. My dad took a really long time to come out of the lab. I was starting to worry, when he finally came out. Watching him from the back seat, I saw him call someone on his cellphone. When he got in the car, he said we needed to go back to Eliomar's office. So we did.
We sat in the waiting room, waiting for his previous exam to be done. I was sitting right by the tea thermos, so I had a cup- chamomile tea with lots of sugar. The same my elementary school gave to sick kids, something I always associated with comfort. I felt slightly less nervous drinking it, but still.
Eliomar called us in. We sat in the black leather chairs by his desk. He took the folder and flipped it open, nodding, making hmm and haa noises, turning his head this way and that and then... "Yes, it is what it seems. These are tumours." I stared at him, expecting some. "The most appropriate course of action in this case is surgery."
I don't know if I could even describe what I felt then. I think the closest I can get is what I read in xlormp once... or close to it: My stomach felt like it fell to the floor and from then on I was walking on my stomach. It was horrible. I can't stand to think of it.
I was in a daze from then on as my dad directed me around. We went to the supermarket to pick up cake icing and I felt damn shitty. At home Cynthia asked if I wanted to help her with the icing but I just kind of collapsed on the sofa. My brother came out of the room to ask my dad what happened as I sat there utterly stunned. Then he came to sit next to me. He said lots of inane things, about videogames and stuff, but I know that's his way of showing he cares.
Not long afterwards, my mom arrived, having flown over from São Paulo. She hugged me and kissed me and told me it would all be all right and all those typical mother things. She told me to cry and I lied on her lap and barely managed a few tears. Then she told me that practically everyone she talked to in São Paulo knew someone who had thyroid cancer. "They're all fine!" she said. I didn't really want to hear about it but I was too tired to say anything.
Then we ate cake. It was delicious. My mom promised she would take me to see Megamind again.
This morning I woke up with a headache, although I felt it was mostly hunger. I got a call from my mom, she was coughing pretty bad. Because of this cold she said she wouldn't take me to the movies. Okay.
TL;DR I have like 8 tumours that need surgery, I have to drop out of college for a while, and have to take pills for the rest of my life.
Well this was all damn shitty news yesterday but today I feel much better. Happy even! Joyful! Why? 'cause my dad took me to see Tangled (dubbed in Portuguese but I don't give a damn). I really love animation, I really, really do. And I was so happy after this movie I practically danced all the way back home- I could have burst out singing in the middle of the mall, I was so elated. When I got home my aunt/godmother (who has been messaging me all week, with each step of the way) messaged me on skype and just said generally supportive things and I couldn't help gushing to her about how happy I was and I ended up bursting with, "I want to get better soon so that I can make movies that will make people happy like this!"
And she says, "If that's the case I'll pay for you to go to the movies every day until the doctor says you're healthy enough to go back to the States. But only if they're good movies!"
I asked, if I could rent movies instead if there weren't any good ones in theaters. And she said yes, but no wasting money on crappy movies.
So yeah, even if this is exaggerated godmother talk, I'm just... blissful. I feel this is a little ridiculous for someone who just found out she has cancer, but damn if I won't take the opportunity to feel gleeful.
Anyway that's my story.