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.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
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.
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.
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