Merely dented

[thehappygirl53]

So, the reason I went to Mr. Kyle's to be cheered up last week is, I'm almost undoubtedly going to have thyroid surgery in the near future. I talked about it a bit way back in the first couple of posts on this blog. Basically, whenever they look inside your body via scans and tests, they find stuff. One thing they found with all the CT and PET scans I had was nodules on my thyroid. Lots and lots of people have them--I read on one website that something like 90% of adults over 50 have some kind of nodule on the thyroid. Usually, it's harmless and ignored, but the nodules on mine showed calcification on one so I had a biopsy. Turned out I had a hurthle cell growth, which are 80% benign, but the tricky thing is, you can't tell the nature of the growth until it's removed along with half the thyroid. If it's benign, that's fine, but if it's malignant, they go back and take the rest of the thyroid. I was originally told I'd probably have to have surgery as soon as I recovered from the radiation for the lymphoma, but my endocrinologist said I could have another ultrasound in January and we'd reevaluate.

He took a long, long time looking over the new ultrasound, and he really thinks I should have the surgery. I was really hoping it would be something we'd just monitor for a few more years. So, I have an appointment with a surgeon on Feb 12 and we'll talk about the options. I can either go with the partial thyroidectomy and run the risk that I'd have two surgeries in a matter of days or have the whole thyroid out, but be done with it.

Rats, rats, rats. I'm bummed, obviously, but as I told my sister, I wasn't crushed. I was merely dented.