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?