(please note that this post was written the day after surgery - back in July - and therefore does not tell the full story).
Back in January, I went to my college’s Wellness/Health Center, because I noticed a rather large lump on my neck while sitting in class one day. The nurse practitioner told me that it was a swollen lymph node, and gave me an antibiotic to make the swollen lymph node better. This was meant to work within a week... well, 2 months went by, and nothing changed (yet I still had to pay for the medication… still a bit bitter about that).
During spring break in March, I visited a physician's assistant at home. She could tell right away that it was NOT my lymph node; on the contrary, my thyroid had a huge nodule on it. She suspected that it was either hypo or hyperthyroidism, so I had blood work done. About a week later, the PA called to let me know that my thyroid is producing the correct amounts, so it was not hypo/hyperthyroidism. I then had an ultrasound done on my thyroid so that they could get a better understanding of it.
In April, I visited a nurse practitioner at an endocrinology clinic, and she told me the results on the ultrasound: the nodes on the right of my thyroid were 3x the size of my actual thyroid (and it continued to grow after this, and eventually reached the isthmus – middle – of my thyroid). She had a sneaking suspicion that it could be cancer, so she ordered a biopsy (thin needle aspiration) for me.
In May, I went to get the biopsy done. They stuck 4 needles in my neck in order to get tissue samples. A week later, the results had come out inconclusive, so they did another test with the remaining tissue samples... and a week after that, it was still inconclusive. By this point, I had two options: wait until August and have another biopsy and hope the results came back with some sort of answer, OR go ahead with surgery. I weighed these options for a while. The NP didn’t really know what my best option was; she said her best guess for cancer was 20%. Eventually, I asked the NP to schedule me a meeting with a surgeon.
July 16th, I met with my surgeon. He told me that they would take half of my thyroid out (plus the isthmus), and while in the operating room, they could test that part of the thyroid for cancer by sending it over to pathology. If it was cancer, they would have to then take out the remainder of my thyroid. This seemed fine to me, because my thyroid was causing me a lot of discomfort, and I didn’t want to live with it. If it wasn’t cancer, I would still have a fully-functioning ½ thyroid.
On July 25th, I had surgery. When I woke up, my surgeon came in and told me that they had to take the whole thing out because it was cancer.This is a pretty weird way to find out you have cancer, but it could be worse. I'm just glad that I'm finally on the road to recovery.
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