finally feeling more human

Well, here I am finally. My treatment did not go as I had anticipated. I went in at 10:15 am on Friday morning (the 10th). I had to stop by the lab first to have a pregnancy test, standard procedure. Then I got to sit around the waiting room in radiology for about an hour. Finally they came out and took me back to Nuclear Med. My Endo was there along with the nuclear med. tech and a nurse. They had me sign a sheet saying I wasn't pregnant but that I released them from all liability if I was. Then they went over my list of "rules" and had me sign a copy of that as well as signing an authorization for treatment form. They verified my dosage which was just over 200 millicurries. Actually it's a pretty high dose, had it been 220 I would've been hospitalized for 24-72 hours but I opted to go ahead and go home. They asked if I had any questions and after that my Endo left and the nurse came hefting a small but clearly heavy lead container. She sat it in front of me and opened it then she told me to remove the plastic container inside and shoot the pill like a shot and put the lid back on and stick it back in the lead container. While I did this she stood back across the room from me. At least she wasn't decked out in the space suit to hand it to me like I hear that they used to do. After that I was free to go. I wasn't allowed to eat for 4 hours prior to the dose and had to wait for 2 hours afterwards but I was told to immediately begin sucking on lemon drops to encourage my salivary glands to keep working. I was also told that should I vomit within the next two hours to call them so they could send Haz. Mat. out for clean up. Good stuff.
I felt pretty okay for the next few hours but still needed to stay on my LID for the next 24 hours so I went home and grabbed my special food and went on to my dad's house to settle in. I grabbed a snack and went to sleep. I woke up around 6:30 pm and cooked myself some dinner which was awkward because I tried not to touch food that didn't belong to me and I had to eat on a disposable plate with disposable silverware. My dad was disappointed that he still had to cook his own food. Then I decided that my allergies couldn't abide by all the dust and mouse shit in my bedroom so I started cleaning and then I started packing all his crap up so he can know that it is time to get out of my house.
Then Saturday came and I just kept sleeping and sleeping. I was only awake for a few hours. Sunday I woke up around 1:30pm and only because my dad wanted me to help him go buy a new used truck since he just wrecked his the week before. We went by my mom's house so he could borrow the money from her and I to go back to sleep while she took him to go get the truck. That's when the real fun started. I just kept sleeping and when I was awake I was nauseous. My mom decided that I should take a laxative. Okay, here I'm going to stop and apologize in advance to anyone who is against TMI and do my best to be vague but informative. I have a history of being prone to constipation. I was actually supposed to have a colonoscopy back in May to remove some polyps but then this cancer thing came along. So here I am, extrememly hypothyroid which also makes you constipated. I was leery about the laxative because I tend to have painful cramping that sometimes results in vomiting and near-fainting when I try to "force" the issue. I don't know if what happened next was 100% the laxative but I suspect it mostly was. I began having horrible cramping and then started sweating and feeling faint and vomiting and could hardly set up. I got so weak and in such pain that I decided to go to the ER. They gave me an IV with anti-nausea medicine and saline for hydration. They also discovered that I had a urinary tract infection so after awhile they finally sent me home, which was now my mom's house because I needed more people around to help me and I didn't want my dad to have to take off of work. Plus when you feel like crap you really just want your mommy, don't you? I then pretty much slept for the next 3 days while my mom nagged me that I needed to get up and drink more water to get the radiation out as fast as possible. By Wednesday I finally felt well enough to stay awake for at least several hours and I missed my boys terribly so I went to the hospital and had them wave the magic wand over me (geiger counter) to make sure I wasn't too radioactive for my boys. They said as long as I didn't have them sitting on me for more than about 20 minutes at a time and I slept alone that they should be okay. So I finally came home and for the rest of the week my family still came over to help with the boys and let me sleep uninterrupted. Now here I am almost a week later and I'm finally getting over my hypothyroidism, slowly but surely. It takes about 6-8 weeks to get my levels back up but I feel much better. The most troublesome side effect that I have at this point is the fact that I can't taste anything. Apparently, this isn't real common but has been noted on a few message boards to have happened and it seems to last a couple of weeks. It's like I cooked a hamburger and let the grease cool and coagulate and then licked it. I have this constant feeling of a thick coating of grease on my tongue that I can't taste through. If I happen to eat anything greasy it's god-awful. If it keeps up I could actually lose some weight which I'd love. I haven't eaten any chocolate because what's the point, I can't taste it. I've been very fortunate to have several people bring food for my family and I so I haven't had to really cook dinner since I've been home. It's nice to not have to worry if someone is a bad cook too because nothing really tastes like anything to me. I know this post is a little long and for that I apologize but it has been awhile and is likely to be awhile before I get around to posting again. So I'll leave you with this little nugget. I've gained 10 pounds since going hypothyroid for my treatment. Last night before bed while waiting on his bedtime stories, Owen was laying in MY bed on MY pillow when he pipes up in a really whiny voice, "Mom, you keep getting fatter and pushing me off of the pillow." Yes I did indeed birthe such a creature.

Time to Glow

I am so relieved. My levels are finally where they need to be and I will have my radiation on Friday around noon. I am not having a dose quite high enough to be hospitalized but I'll be staying with my dad for about a week, maybe more maybe less depending on how radioactive I am. I don't want to take any chances with the kids. It's going to be really hard to be away from them for more than a couple of days but I couldn't live with myself if I thought it was going to do any long term harm to them. Kids and pets are more susceptible to ill effects of radiation. They say that for two weeks following a dose that you should pretend you have strep throat and refrain from kissing or sharing drinks, foods, etc. with others. If I wash or handle other peoples eating utensils or food I should wear gloves. Radiation is primarily excreted through saliva, urine, and sweat. If I do come home sooner than two weeks I will have to sleep in the extra bedroom alone until the two weeks is up. I will be relieved to get this all over with! Especially this restrictive diet. I've been hypothyroid for the past three weeks so that's a lot of the reason I haven't posted on here, sorry to leave anyone hanging on what was going on but I've just been too exhausted. I've had lots of ideas for posts just no energy. Hopefully I'll be able to post a little more next week but my dad doesn't have internet at his house so I'll take the laptop and if I get lucky I'll maybe catch a signal off a neighbor or something. I also might go down to the library or something to post. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers!

I hate Rain

This weather is making me miserable. It just keeps raining and raining. I think I have SAD. I have been feeling very overwhelmed and depressed lately and it can't just be the weather. I don't trust or necessarily like my Endo. I told him that I wanted to have a high enough dose of RAI to be hospitalized so that I wouldn't have to be around my children and unneccessarily expose them to radiation and because I want to be aggressive with this disease. He said I'd have to have a dose of 250 millicurries in order to be hospitalized but he wouldn't mind giving me a 300 dose. I said fine and planned to start my LID on Monday the 15th. Now the more I research and correspond with Dr. Ain (the thyroid specialist in Kentucky) I don't think I should have that high of a dose because it's dangerous for your bone marrow and kidneys. There's something called a dosimetry study that gives a patient a small tracer dose of the radioactive iodine while the patient is on the LID and for five days the patient has blood and urine tests and the nuclear medicine department computes it all and comes up with the maximum safe dose for each individual patient. Well the catch is that hardly any institutions offer this dosimetry and if they do it usually isn't covered by insurance. So I really really want to do my therapy using that technique but I also want to hurry up and get my treatment over with before all the holidays roll around. So I may have to travel after all and I may have to find a new doctor. Whatever I do I'm determined to do this year though because all of my co-insurance and deductibles are met so I'm done with out-of-pocket costs.
On another note, I'm coming down with something because I can't stop coughing and my lungs feel like they're covered in mucous. I have absolutely no energy and tons of stuff to take care of. I need some kind of help but I hate asking. David did say he'd start taking over household cleaning for awhile but he has yet to start and no one but me can really prepare food for the low-iodine diet because I'm so picky and I have the cookbook anyway. I don't know what I need so just pray for me please. Thanks

My new profile pic

Do you like my new profile pic? It's my cat, Julie. I can never seem to find a picture of myself that I like and I think my cat is pretty so there ya go. We went to visit my grandpa over Labor Day weekend. He lives in Arkansas near Bull Shoals Lake. He has a barn full of wild cats. Last month when I was down there one of the momma cats just had kittens who barely had their eyes open. Since then both my grandpa and his neighbor have had kittens that have all been dying. So this last weekend when I went back there was only one left so I took him before he could meet the same fate as his siblings. So I got him to the vet and she says he's probably only 5 or 6 weeks old and was flea, mite, and tick ridden. She said his little body was covered in bruises probably due to being anemic from all the bug bites. She said he was severely underweight, weighing almost 1 pound. So that just reinforced how happy I was to have saved him. The boys love him and Owen named him Ghost Rider. Owen is a big-time Johnny Cash fan. How many 4 year olds can sing all the words to Ring of Fire, Walk the Line, and Ghost Rider? Maybe not the most appropriate choice of music on my part but hey he knows Old McDonald too. I had to back off a little bit of Mr. Cash when I heard my son singing, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." That wasn't cool. Bad Mommy. At least I can still listen to whatever I want when it's just Parker and me- for now.

Finally getting to it

So I finally got the go-ahead from my doctor to start my low-iodine diet and stop taking my cytomel. I will do this for approximately 3 weeks or until my TSH level is adequate. I'll be at the lab once a week until my level is where it needs to be. However, as much as I've been waiting to get all this crap over with I'm going to wait until the 15th to start because my husbands' birthday is coming up and so is my friend Anna's wedding. I do not want to be on the LID during those times. I went on the diet for a week a couple of weeks ago to practice and also to see if it made any difference in my iodine levels for my 24 hr. urine test. I don't trust those tests now because before when I did the 24 hr. urine test without changing my diet my levels were actually lower! The doctor didn't really know what to make of that. The recipes were actually pretty good, unfortunately I'm kind of a picky eater and so I'll be eating the same thing quite a bit. I made my own peanut butter, salsa, italian dressing, tomato sauce, and breads. I didn't dislike anything I tried but it was a lot of work. I'll be prepping everything I can ahead of time since I'll be hypothyroid this time around and likely be even more exhausted than I already am. I feel bad about not blogging more often but I really am tired ALL the time and I've been out of town 2 of the last 4 weekends. Owen just went back to preschool so that might give me a little more time but who knows how I'll use that time. I've also been a little depressed lately but my Endo says it's probably due to the same reasons as the fatigue which is that cytomel is only T3 hormone whereas a normal thyroid makes both T3 & T4. I can't get the synthetic T4 until my radiation therapy is completed. So that's about all for now.

Kicking Dad Out

This post has nothing to do with cancer. Many of you know that the first house we bought was in Bonner Springs and that my dad lived there with us. When we moved to this house we left him there. Well, times are tough and we're broke so we're going to sell the Bonner house. Hopefully it'll sell in this jacked up market. Have you ever tried to get your unemployed drunkard father out of your house? No? Really? Well let me enlighten you. It isn't easy. He hasn't paid rent since May and I use the term paid loosely. He took a lump sum for his retirement and I kept all the money in an account and doled it out to him and took his rent out of that. That money ran out in May and ever since then I've been telling him he needed to find another place to live because we couldn't afford to pay both mortgages. So here we are in August and I finally made my husband call him and tell him to get out after my "firm" deadline of July 31st has come and gone because he obviously isn't listening to me. I could probably write an entire book about my dad's unique persona but I might vomit if I do. I once made him a t-shirt that sums him up pretty well: Victim of Circumstance. You see, nothing is ever his fault. I'll admit his life hasn't been easy; his mother left him and his seven brothers and sisters when he, the oldest, was thirteen. The good-paying factory job he worked at on and off for 20 years basically poisoned him and has left him chronically ill. However, he's had opportunities too that he's pissed off. If he hadn't been laying around drunk so much maybe he'd have a job by now or more importantly if he'd simply filled out papers timely and made a few phone calls he could probably be on disability right now and not be causing my husband and I great anxiety over when we'll ever get him out of our house. So if any of you kind readers out there would like a 57 year old drunken Jehovah's Witness to take in for a charity along with his three big black dogs give me a call.

still waiting...

well, I really have been lazy about blogging. It's just that days go by so fast and I have to feed my kids and sleep and clean my house and go to the pool, etc. etc. Plus it just doesn't seem like I have any new news to report. However, I did re-read my last post and realized that I hadn't shared the results of my last F.N.A. It looks okay, they say. So now I just need to get the results of my last 24-hr urine test and then I see my Endo on Aug. 7th.
I don't know that I've enlightened the readers of this blog on the 24-hr urine test. See, back in April when all was well and no one thought I had cancer my surgeon had a CT with contrast performed on me. Well, the contrast that is used would affect my radioactive iodine treatment by making it less effective so I have to make sure it's all out of my system before I can take my radioactive pill. It can stay in your body for 2-12 months so I have to periodically do a test where every drop of pee for one whole day has to be kept in a jug that must be refrigerated and then sent to a lab. So basically this is all I'm waiting on to start my treatment. I am not looking forward to having to be away from my kids for around two weeks once I have this treatment but I don't want them to get cancer either so I'd just as soon get this all over with. I'll have to go in and have my levels checked often to see what my levels of radioactivity are before I go home to my kids. My sister-in-law has kindly agreed to let me stay at her house while I emanate radioactive vibes. At least I can catch up on my scrapbooking! I'll try and be better about posting but I can't promise anything.

I love F.N.A.'s!

Well, I'm a slacker. I haven't updated because like my friend Carrie, I've been plucking chin hairs. I've also been doing a little bit of what my husband's company pays me for: the books. I'm almost finished with March! See, I told you I'm a slacker and a procrastinator.
So onto the fun stuff. I saw my endocrinologist a week ago and I like him better than I did in the hospital. Perhaps the morphine clouded my judgment. At any rate he agreed to give me a high enough dose of the I-131 radiation to justify a hospital stay, thus saving humanity from my radioactive vibes. My calcium levels are holding up well so hopefully I'll soon be able to stop taking those horse pills twice a day. He ordered yet another ultrasound of the left side of my neck and they found a couple more enlarged lymph nodes so now I have to go in on the 18th and have more FNAs (fine-needle aspiration). I don't really understand why these enlarged nodes didn't show up on the ultrasound my surgeon did during surgery where he actually stuck the probe INSIDE my neck wound or why they wouldn't have lit up on my PET scan if they were malignant. They don't have an answer for that really either. They do say that it could just be that the nodes are irritated from surgery. I don't really have a lot of faith in their FNAs though because they were wrong before. So the short of it is that as long as the FNA comes back clean they will take me off my cytomel and I'll start the low-iodine diet and 2-3 weeks after that I'll get microwaved from the inside.
I also saw my surgeon today and got to watch my vocal cords working on video! That was freaky looking. I told him "thanks for not slicing up my vocal cords. I like talking!" He said "Sorry about your parathyroid glands." Those weren't his fault though, and anyway I still have 1 1/2 and apparently they're working. So anyway I guess that's it for now. I'll try and do better with keeping up this blog.

I'm Uplifting

Apparently I'm uplifting. I had no idea. I went to the hospital today to have my labwork done. I go every Monday and Thursday and I have the same lab tech every time. Today she said, 'you've come a long way. It's so uplifting to talk to you.' I don't use quotation marks because my memory is terrible but that's basically what she said. I had no idea what she was talking about but okay whatever. I don't want to sound ungrateful or bitchy because that's not how I feel at all. I just honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about. People keep telling me I'm so strong and I have such a good outlook. I don't feel strong or particularly special about how I'm handling all this. It just has to be handled and I don't see any reason to be dramatic about it. It'll all be fine and if not what am I going to do about it? I'm not afraid of things that have to be done medically. I'm just not. I've never been afraid to have surgery, which works out well for me considering I'm only 32 and I've had around 10 surgeries in my life. I've also never been particularly afraid to die. Honestly, I became much more attached to my life once I had my children. That being said I'd like to live for a long time but it's not up to me. Perhaps I'd panic more if I was told I had pancreatic cancer or some other more dangerous form. But I'm told this is very curable so what's to worry about? Sure it's inconvenient but so are stoplights, should I cry about those everyday too?
I hope I don't sound like a jerk I'm just honestly baffled by the attention I've received. I don't want to discourage anyone from saying nice things to me because I do appreciate it, I guess I just don't feel very worthy. SO that being said, to all of my fabulous friends out there who say they don't know how they could handle my situation I say you'd do fine. You'd be just as strong as you think I am, maybe even stronger. I think no one really knows what they can handle until it's put before them.
Here's another way I look at it. One of the most common prayers I pray practically every night is for David to accept Jesus as his savior. Maybe it'll take something like what we're going through now to make that happen. If me having cancer results in David being saved then it is totally worth it to me.

I have my first real appointment with my endocrinologist on Wednesday so I will probably wait until then to post again with an update about what is to come.

Out of Town

Hey, I just thought I'd let you all know that I'll be gone for the weekend. I'm leaving tomorrow morning and will be back on Sunday night. I finally feel relaxed enough to go down to Arkansas to see my grandpa. I'm taking the boys and we're going with my mom. Hopefully I can catch up on some reading. I'd take my scrapbooking stuff but my mom would just make fun of me for packing so much stuff for only two days. No matter how lightly I think I've packed she always has some comment about how I bring too much. I don't know why it bothers her how much stuff I bring, especially when we're taking my van and we have plenty of room. Then again I don't know why I care that she makes fun of my packing. My motto is that it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. I hate being ill-prepared. I wish I had more witticisms to share but I'm all tapped out, maybe next time.

So the last time I posted I think I mentioned a granuloma on my left lung that we were all worried about. My doctor was going to wait until my radioactive iodine whole body scan to see what turned out but then both my surgeon and endocrinologist decided that it would be best to do a PET scan. So my surgeon called me Monday evening around 5:30 and got me scheduled for a PET scan on Tuesday morning. He then called me this morning and told me some good news. The only areas that "lit up" on the scan were all around the areas that he removed tissue, which I think means that he got all the big chunks of cancer out. Yea!! So now I'll have what's called an ablation dose of radioactive iodine in 3-8 weeks, the exact timing depends on certain factors such as my TSH levels.
So other than that I'm feeling better, a little more awake. I didn't take a nap or sleep in today for the first time since I've been home. I also was home alone with both kids today for the first time. I even let Owen have a friend over for a few hours and took them all to the pool up the street. I got laundry done and went to the grocery store too so I feel kind of rejuvenated. I think the good news I got this morning helped a lot. I may go down to Arkansas to visit my grandpa with my mom this weekend but I'm not sure yet.
So all that being said, I'm about ready to go to bed.

Home from the Hospital

Here's my pretty neck right before I left to go to the doctor and have my steri-strips removed. No stitches folks, Dermabond! Skin glue works great.
Here's my pretty neck after coming back from the doctor. That greenish-yellow color around the back area is indeed bruising. My skin was starting to get a little irritated by the steri-strips but the glue is holding after only 4 days!
I don't even have any lifting restrictions after this surgery so I can hold my babies. They are happy to have their mom back and I'm happy to be back.
Parker's so happy he has to show off his little cat-tongue. I'm not sure why we call it that but he has a weird looking tongue, like it's too small for his mouth or something.
Okay, so on to the update. My doctor at first started to say I had stage III or stage IV papillary thyroid cancer but then he looked at the pathology report and some chart and said that because of my age I was actually a stage I, which puts me at around a 90% survival rate. He said they have recently updated the staging criteria and that's why he was so off. I'm still not sure I trust it. I would think I would be a stage II at least since I had so many metases. 7 out of 12 nodes have been cancerous so far. They haven't done the report on the central node dissection yet, only the right side. While he was in my neck he found two more masses that looked just like the first thing he took out. Those three masses were at least 90% taken over by cancer cells which is why they no longer resembled lymph nodes and confused the other pathologist that called them cleft cysts. So I'm not rare in that regard. This is just typical papillary thyroid cancer. The tumor they found in my thyroid was 2.5 cm. So for now I'm just trying to heal and I go see my Endocrinologist on July 2nd and we talk about when to start my radiation. It will all depend on my TSH levels I guess. One unpleasant and scary thing that has come up is that my chest x-ray that I had the week before my surgery showed a small granuloma on my left lung. We are really hoping that this isn't the cancer having spread but we won't know until after I have my PET scan. If the area lights up on the scan after I take the radioactive iodine then it's cancer but hopefully it's just scar tissue from a previous infection.
Since my surgery, I am having difficulty talking loud, which is pretty normal, and difficulty swallowing liquids without aspirating into my lungs. That sucks cuz then I start coughing and that is really difficult and painful. One of my vocal cords may have been slightly damaged which would cause these things but it looks better today than it did the other day and I'm slowly starting to talk louder so it is healing. The other weird feeling is my right ear. I can't really feel it. Except it itches. If I scratch it, I can't really feel that I'm scratching it. It is quite annoying so I look forward to those nerves healing and getting back to normal.
I have to have my calcium levels monitored because 2 of my parathyroid glands were lost and one had to be transplanted out of my thyroid and into a muscle so it could take a moment to work again. But so far my calcium levels have looked good so I don't think I'll have to be on calcium for the rest of my life. I'm exhausted now so that's all I can think of. Sorry it's so long.

There are some things morphine just can't fix

Well, I'm in the hospital. My surgery was yesterday and I was out for nearly eight hours but the surgeon says he took about 5 1/2 hours for the surgery. He found a couple more masses that looked just like the first thing that he took out. They are all now pretty sure that these are lymph nodes that the cancer has spread to. It was an aggressive surgery which should make my chances higher. They seem to consider the surgery successful and I met with my new endocrinologist this morning. I'm not sure what to think of him just yet. They are very concerned about my calcium because of my parathyroid glands. One was embedded in my thyroid so he took it out and re-implanted it in a muscle but he says it will take a few weeks to start working again. One was left in tact and the other two were taken out with the central lymph nodes and the pathology department was supposed to give them back to the surgeon so they could also be re-implanted but there was a miscommunication and now they are gone. They say even a 1/2 of a parathyroid gland should be enough and I have about 1 1/2 so hopefully it'll be enough. I really don't want to have to take a ton of calcium and vitamin D for the rest of my life in addition to the thyroid hormone.
My throat hurts so bad from having that breathing tube in for 8 hours. I can only eat ice chips, applesauce, and jell-o so far. I can't even drink water it's so swollen. It's weird that I need thicker stuff like applesauce to get something to go down. But everytime I try and drink water I'm afraid I'm going to aspirate it into my lungs. I definitely don't need that. It doesn't matter how much morphine I take my throat still hurts like hell.
I'm really exhausted so I'm going to try and sleep some more, just wanted to let everyone know what's going on so far.

So Batman mowed my lawn the other day....

Isn't he cute? His dad bought him this get-up for his birthday. He likes to push his little toy mower beside David while he mows the lawn. He's quite helpful.

And then there's this guy who isn't much for the manual labor. He prefers to be on my hip. If you look close you can see my lovely neck gash that's about to be re-opened and joined by a lower but bigger gash on Monday morning (the 16th) Yep, I'm gonna sneak in an update here. I have my surgery with my regular surgeon next Monday. I'll be in the hospital for three days. My gut instinct told me to stay with my surgeon so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm starting to get nervous about how the rest of my summer will go. Too bad this couldn't have been found in the winter. Well enough of that.
I can't enough of my smiley baby. He kept taking mine and Owen's toothbrush so I decided to give him his own to play with now that he's got 7 teeth. He was quite excited about it. I have about 30 more such pictures if you need more proof but I'll just have to hope this one's enough cuz I'm too lazy to upload anymore tonight.
I hope my family keeps these characters entertained and happy while I'm out of commission. I'm going to see if I can't bring David's laptop to the hospital so when I'm high on morphine I can continue to blog. I'm not like the average person who passes out with such narcotics. I can't sleep and I have too much to say so maybe blogging will keep me entertained, I can't promise that you'll be entertained though. More to come....

I'll be Radioactive

I've been devoting more of my time to researching the treatment I will be undergoing in August. When I take the RAI 131 I will be radioactive, possibly for up to 3 weeks. Some hospitals keep patients in an isolation room for up to 3 days. Many physicians tell their patients to check into a hotel for a few days. Each time I use the restroom I'm supposed to flush the toilet 3 times to get rid of as much radioactivity as possible. I'm not supposed to be around my kids for several days, some moms actually stay away for up to two weeks but everything I've read so far says this is overly cautious and unnneccessary. I can't touch other peoples' food and I have to eat with disposable utensils. I shouldn't sleep in the same bed as anyone else and I have to launder my linen, towels, clothes separately from everyone else's and run a couple of extra rinse cycles. When the doctors' bring in the medicine for me to take they are all decked out in protective gear and will hand me a heavy metal tube which I will open and extract a pill or liquid from a tube to take so no one else has to touch it. This is one nutty ass disease. At least it's supposedly highly curable. I told my husband to change my ringtone after I have my treatment to the song Radioactive. He likes that. That's about all he likes about this situation. More to come....

What Would You Do?

I hate making tough decisions. Time is running short so I have to decide where to have my surgery. My first inclination is to stay here and have my regular surgeon do it. I have a lot of respect for him and he's done three other surgeries on me and hasn't screwed me up yet. However, I realize this is really important and don't want to just rush into it. Everything I've read says that the patients' outcome with this type of cancer is directly related to the skill of the surgeon. The specialist in Kentucky recommends choosing a surgeon that performs at least 20 of these operations per year but preferably more than 30 per year. My surgeon does 20-30 per year, however only about 1/3 of them are performed because of cancer rather than another disease. Apparently having cancer somehow increases your odds of having a complication occur. In case you're wondering some of the complications are loss of feeling in the tongue, the shoulder, and various other places in that region. Also one corner of my mouth may droop permanently or at least for quite awhile because nerves take a really long time to heal and sometimes never heal. The most serious and less likely complication is paralyzation of the vocal cords, called the recurrent laryngeal nerves. If only one of these nerves is damaged it can result in hoarseness that may gradually improve but if both nerves are damaged then it prevents speech and interferes with proper breathing and would require me to have a tracheotomy & talk with one of those little machine things. Not a fun prospect.

So one other option is to go to Houston to MD Anderson. Someone who knows a friend of my mother-in-law is a nurse there and has graciously offered my family the use of her home should I decide to go there. I don't know how quickly they could get me in there but I think their surgeons do quite a bit more of these types of surgeries than my surgeon does. Thyroid cancer accounts for approximately 1-2 % of all cancers so it's kind of rare therefore there aren't many surgeons out there that would call themselves thyroid specialists. There don't appear to be any in Kansas City, even at KU.

I just don't know what to do. I know I'm not supposed to consider cost or convenience but I can't help it. I don't want to leave my kids for a week or more and buy plane tickets and such but I also don't want a hole in my neck. I just know that Owen would be stealing my little talking machine so I couldn't yell at him! I need advice. What would you do?

I'm Rare times 3

Just a note: I have copied & pasted the following from my Myspace blog. I don't typically blog there but I have only told about 4 people about my blogsite here so I had to blog there to get this information to as many people as possible so I can stop telling the story over and over. Okay here goes:

My doctor said he always knew I was unique but that now I was just taking it too far. Some of you know a little and some of you know none so I'll start at the start.

I've had a big "thing" sticking out of the side of my neck that only I ever really noticed for years, I can't recall how many. I'd asked a couple of my doctors if I should do something about it but they said no some people just have big lymph nodes. So about a month or so ago I was at my ENT (ear, nose, & throat) doc about my sinuses. He's been my doctor for 13 years and has done 2 sinus surgeries on me. We have a great rapport and I trust him, kind of a big deal for me. I casually asked him how bad it would hurt to remove this pesky lymph node. He wanted to know why and then he felt it. Then he wanted to stick a big needle in it right then and there and see what was up. I'm not afraid of hardly anything medical so I say go ahead. As soon as he stuck the needle in I knew something was wrong. He said it's not a lymph node. Black fluid was in the syringe and I said what the hell? He said it was probably old blood and that he thought what I had was a second brachial cleft cyst. It's sort of a birth defect thing, no big deal, but it has to come out.

Fast forward to my surgery one week ago today. I wake up and find out it isn't that. He doesn't know what it is. He and the pathologist think it looks weird. The pathologist suspects that it's papillary thyroid cancer and my doctor still thinks it's some sort of benign cyst. So I get the call this morning that the results are in. It's cancer. It is papillary thyroid cancer but not like normal. This is where I'm rare times 3. It's rare to have a congenital cyst (meaning I was born with it), it's even more rare that it would be in this particular location and even rarer still that it would become malignant. Hence rare times 3. He did take a few large lymph nodes that were near this thing and they tested negative for any malignancy so that's good. However, within 2-4 weeks I need to go back into surgery to have my entire thyroid removed and all of my lymph nodes from my central & right neck & a few from the left side. First I have to have a PET scan to see if they can detect that it may have spread anywhere else like my lungs. This is where I'll take all the prayers I can get. So from what I understand so far if you were forced to have cancer but you got to pick what kind to have you should probably pick papillary thyroid cancer because it's pretty easy to get rid of. The fact that its source is in a cyst makes it rare and complicated and weird but I think it's still going to be okay. I trust my doctor a lot and think he's pretty smart but my mom and husband want me to get a second opinion and my doctor has said that he would understand and support that. He is going to get me in to see an endocrinologist ASAP and will set me up for a second opinion at KU with their thyroid oncology board. He wants to see if his idea of how to handle this concurs with theirs as well. He also gave me the name of a world-renowned thyroid specialist in Kentucky who I will be e-mailing to see his suggestions. I read something online that said there have only been 266 cases written up worldwide where people have had this condition. So I guess I'm nothing if not unique. :) It is a little bizarre to me and I'm not sure how I feel. Maybe it isn't real to me or maybe I'm just that stone cold (hardy har har). I just keep researching and finding out as much as I can. So if I don't respond to you via e-mail or myspace or phone or whatever just know it has nothing to do with you, I'm just a busy little bee right now but I need your prayers.

Fabulous Mother's Day

I had the best Mother's Day. I stayed in bed until noon! No kids bugged me, it was fabulous. When I got up my baby was so happy to see me and we just snuggled on the couch and shared a frozen yogurt. Then it was already time for his nap so he slept and I showered. I then spent most of the day with a couple of girlfriends getting pedicures and having a couple of drinks. I went to my in-laws for dinner and I didn't cook anything or wash anything all day. I told my husband that I needed a Mother's Day once a month from now on. He agreed (probably because I was so happy and cheerful all day). This post may be boring but my day wasn't. I hope all the moms out there had a great day as well. I'll try to be funny and witty and wise next time. :)

Oh, My Aching Back

Can you tell what these are? Toads!!! Loads and loads of toads! That was fun to say. My in-laws have an in ground pool that they didn't cover this winter. So they had about 20 frogs in the dark green/black water. No telling how many were on the bottom drowned. They are mating right now and one of these frogs is quite randy. He was attempting to mate with a large, I assume female, toad that was dying. We pulled them up and he stayed on top of her for the entire 6 hours that they were in our possession. Why were 7 toads in our possession you might ask? Well because Owen loves all animals and fancies himself a zookeeper. He wanted to take some home to look at and to show his dad. So we kept them in this bucket for 6 hours until David could come home and see them, then we took them for a walk to a nearby creek and dropped them off in their new home. I doubt they'll like it much, though, seeing as how toads tend to like more stagnant water as found in ponds. Here's a close up in case you happen to be a toad aficionado.

On this same day I had the pleasure of cleaning up the mess that my husband made whilst massacring my juniper bushes. Is massacring a word? It must be the spell check didn't object. Anyway, I think my husband has lost his mind. Sure they needed a trim but did they deserve this?

This is why my back is in agony. This is 11 lawn bags full of clippings, which are suprisingly heavy.
See that little pile of bush bloodshed on the sidewalk? That's how much is still left because I ran out of bags. The entire sidewalk for the whole length of the bushes had a continuous pile of debris that tall until I tackled it. That my friends is a lot of bending for one gal. I think the continuous bending over was harder than lugging the full sacks down the sidewalk. But at least I felt productive and empowered afterwards. Also justified not going to the gym. :)

My Baby is 1!!!!

I'm having a hard time believing that my baby is one today. I don't plan on having anymore children so I'm kind of sad. He recently weaned from nursing too so that's also sad for me. We had a great little party for him today with just family and two of our close friends. It was a cowboy theme (mostly so I could have an excuse to buy this super cute scrapbook I saw that was cowboy themed). He was so cute! We had a beautiful day today and he loves to be outside. His big brother took him on a ride in his Jeep Powerwheel. We had ice cream cake, which he never wanted to stop eating. Forgive me, but I must show many pictures of our day.

There's just something about children before they learn to talk and when they still need you so much. That's what I'm going to miss about not having babies. The looks of adoration and the sweet innocence. I look forward to the freedom I'll get from having older kids but there's just something about babies. I wish I could just bottle 'em up and keep them small and sweet forever.

Portrait Giveaway

I'm posting this blog so I can win something cool. My old roommate, The Gremlin Wrangler does portraits. She is an ar-teest. A darn good one if you ask me and my son who wants to read a book we co-wrote every night. The deal is I have to write a post about it and link it up to her blog to enter. I don't know what to say except how cool would it be if I could win a portrait done by the famous Gremlin Wrangler? I still have a watercolor fish she made me 13 years ago when we were roomies. If you're reading this then you should go over to her blog and check out this contest. Hurry! It ends Wednesday, I think.

Blessings Counted

The above photo is the scene that inspired this post. A bit odd, no?

Tonight as I was rocking my soon-to-be one year old and feeding him his last bottle before bed I was struck by how fortunate I am. For as long as I can remember, okay I can't remember jack smack, but anyway I do recollect as a child and teenager the only real desire for my adulthood was to have a child. I was sitting in the dimness of my son's room looking at the scattering of toys on the floor & holding my baby and I was overcome by a sense of peace. That is pretty close to a miracle for me. I am pretty much never at peace or completely satisfied with myself or my life. That is an unfortunate flaw of my character that I have always been aware of. So now I'm thinking of a line in a Don Henley song that goes something like, "learn to be still". I'm trying, Don, I really am. So I occasionally come to my senses and do a gratitude check and thank God for the many blessings in my life and ask for help in overcoming my bad attitude. Tonight I am grateful that I have two beautiful healthy little boys. I am grateful that I have a wonderful husband who somehow seems to truly love me (see how even now I have to throw that last part in there?). I'm grateful that I have a mother who is my best friend now that I'm all grown and stuff, various other relatives that are if nothing else good for a few laughs, good friends, a nice house, food to eat, more than enough clothes for my ever-expanding back, two cats, a vehicle that runs, and more "stuff" than anyone really needs. I try to inject a little humor but I seriously am content and very grateful to have that feeling if only briefly in the evening before bed. Tonight I'll pray that my friends and family can also experience that feeling because no matter what any of us have in this life, it means nothing if you can't enjoy the life that you've been given.

Owen & his Boyz

My little boy is growing up. I know, duh! They all do-constantly. But it really hit me today. He had a birthday party to go to tonight for his friend Clinton. Owen has four friends at school that he just loves and talks about all the time. Clinton, Caden, Jay, and Malcolm. Malcolm is the only one who wasn't there because apparently Clinton doesn't much care for him. Ah, the drama of today's preschoolers. He didn't need me at all tonight (except to find the potty). He was just Mr. Popular. All of the other mothers were telling me how much their kids just love Owen. That makes me feel good because that means so far he isn't the brat that everyone avoids. Those boys just played and played like crazy and none of them fought or cried or anything. None of them wanted to leave either, we finally had to drag the three of them away at 8:30.
Owen makes up these crazy stories for me about his friends. He told me one day that he had his own house and when I asked him who lived there he said, "me and my boys". He then proceeded to tell me how he and Caden work in a big building and Caden drives him there in his Jeep (Owen is still too afraid to drive his own Jeep Powerwheel). He has also started telling David and I that "Jay will get mad" or "Jay will get upset" if he cleans up his messes when we ask him to.
So I'm really happy for Owen and proud of him for having friends. I know it sounds basic but it's a big deal to me. I've never been that great at having friends like that. I've had lots of friends, sure, but as a child I don't remember ever having a "posse" like Owen does. I was shy and didn't get close to people easily. I want Owen to live to enjoy life and be carefree because I never have and I think it would feel good. I want Owen to have the storybook childhood that I didn't and just enjoy being a kid before the crappiness of real life sets in.

May I Take Your Order?

I've been blessed to be able to stay home with my kids for the last four years. I'm hoping that I'll be able to continue but it doesn't look promising. This crappy economy is starting to take its toll on us. My husband, a housepainter, is having a hard time keeping money in the business account and I only just now got to put our paycheck (we're incorporated so we get salaries) from two weeks ago into our personal account. I have no idea when I'll be able to put this last paycheck from Friday in. We have assets such as two extra business vehicles and a house that my dad lives in as well as a house that my husband uses as his office & supplies storage but I don't know that we'd be able to sell anything at all let alone for a decent amount of money. Plus I have the problem of what to do with my father. He's a whole other blog.
So the thing I'm pondering is going back to work as a waitress or bartender a few nights a week. That would suck really bad but not as bad as putting my kids in daycare and hitting the forty hour work week. It's not quite that bleak yet. I am already tired all the time and behind on doing the books for my husband as it is. Sometimes I do miss restaurant life but not enough to actually want to go back. I guess for now it just means cutting back as much as possible. I'm all about the Equate and Hy-Vee brands now baby!

Housework Blows

I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything new here. Housework is one of the most unfulfilling things I've ever been subjected to. There's no real sense of accomplishment or even a feeling of having completed something. It is ongoing. Sure it looks great today but by tomorrow I get to do it all again or it looks like I'm some sort of a scumbag. I hate how it takes time away from other things that actually make me feel fulfilled, such as scrapbooking my kids' early years before they slip away. My husband doesn't get this. He is so critical. I vacuumed the upstairs today after having left the vacuum laying all over the hallway for the last two days. I had vacuumed downstairs two days ago with the big vacuum but just yesterday with the robot vacuum that I got for Christmas. So when I was finished upstairs I put the big vacuum away downstairs and my husband asks why I wasn't going to vacuum downstairs (it was 9:30 at night! time to put kids to bed) and I said I already did yesterday. So he keeps on about how there's specks all over in the downstairs hall. So I tell him if he's so worried about them to feel free to take care of it himself (which he does). But he wonders why I got all pissy about it. Sometimes I think testosterone eats brain cells. Sorry the post is so boring but I got nothing here and I'm trying to make myself do this everyday. We shall see....

No Cancer For Me

So I have this deformity in my neck. I've thought for quite awhile now that I had a ginormous lymph node and I had complained to my primary doctor. He would only say that some people just have big nodes. Then a few weeks ago I went to my ENT about my sinuses and happened to ask how painful it was to have a lymph node removed. He has been my doctor for about 13 years and performed 2 sinus surgeries on me in the past. He looked at me quizzically and felt my neck. He asked why he'd never felt that before. I said, "I don't know, you're the doctor." I should mention that I am slightly obsessed with my lymph nodes and have CBC's performed every six months or so since my grandma died from Lymphomic Leukemia and my mom now has it as well.
So he casually mentioned that he would like to stick a big needle into it and draw out some fluid for testing. I'm a pretty good sport as far as medical stuff goes so I say "hey why not?" As soon as he stuck the needle in he made a strange sound and said that it was not a lymph node at all. He showed me the syringe that was now filled with black fluid. "what the hell is that?" I asked. He said it was probably old blood. He then tells me that it is probably what is known as a congenital brachial cleft cyst. This is something that is considered a birth defect. He says I need to have a CT scan so he can map it out because these things can be wrapped all around nerves and arteries and whatnot and he wants to know what he's going to find when he cuts open my neck. Sounds fair to me.
When I go back to get the results he says that now he saw some lesions and a nodule on my thyroid that he has to check out before he can cut out my cyst. In his casual way he mentions that I could have thyroid cancer and he doesn't want to take the cyst out only to find out later that the thyroid should come out. I have been made to understand that if one should ever be forced to choose a type of cancer to have then thyroid cancer would be the best choice. Fabulous. Well, to speed this story up a bit I had an ultrasound and they stuck yet another 3 needles into my thyroid this time to get some fluid and did some blood work to check my thyroid function. All came back fine and I am now free to have my birth defect removed. I will be in the hospital overnight but I'm thinking it'll be a nice break from the kids. Call me crazy but perhaps I could get a little quiet time.
My doctor says these cysts aren't a very common occurence, that he's performed maybe a dozen of these operations which are called neck dissections. I wish they'd come up with a better name. He warned me that there are a lot of nerves and arteries in the neck area and it is fairly risky, I could lose function of my voicebox (wouldn't that please my husband?), tongue, my shoulder, and feeling in my skin around that area. He assures me that he has done many operations on necks and feels confident that he can get this thing out without any complications. Let's all pray he's right and that he doesn't drink too much caffeine that morning and get the jitters.