What Now???

Seriously, how do you respond to that? 95% of these things are suppose to be benign. I'm a 23 year old healthy male. I'm in the middle of finishing Seminary as I try to get into Medical School. I have a girlfriend. I have a full-time job at a hospital. I have cancer... as the jungle goes, "One of these things is not like the other."

The answer, you read.

During what I now refer to with the direct article as "the Call," my physician gave me several websites to look at for general information. It was here that I learned of the details of my treatment. The doctor had told me that a total thyroidectomy would be needed due to the bi-lateral presentation of nodules and I would most likely require what's known as Radioactive Iodine Treatment. After gleaning all the information that I could from these websites and a thyroid cancer survivor Stephani's sister, Jessica, graciously set a meeting for us with, a uniform average treatment began to form. I have to be honest here, for all fear that accompanies the word Cancer I was comforted by the kind of cancer I had. Honestly, I lucked out. They say that if you're going to get cancer, get thyroid cancer. And, if you're going to get thyroid cancer, get papillary thyroid cancer. The reason for this being that it is both highly treatable with replacement hormones and the radiation used is hyper specific, of which more later.

I would have my thyroid removed and six weeks later I would undergo Radioactive Iodine treatment. The surgery itself is a fairly straightforward surgery. The risk on the other hand is that I would become mute due to the proximity of the nerve that innervates my vocal chords. After it, I would have a scar from side to side across the base of my neck and possibly up the side of my neck if the cancer had spread to my lateral lymph nodes. The Radioactive Iodine is a gift from God. Due to the thyroid being the only part of your body which uptakes Iodine in appreciable amounts, the radioactive Iodine would only attack my thyroid, thus being in a whole other category as the generalized chemo. Key to this idea is that if the cancer had spread it would not be lung or bone cancer but thyroid cancer in my lung or my bone. Thus, if it had spread, the RI would kill it. However, the RI would be an event. I would begin my stay in a led-lined hospital room where a physician wearing a hazmat suit would administer a pill that would subsequently make me set off a geiger counter. I would remain there for around three days disposing of everything I touch, taking four showers a day, and unable to be in any proximity of another human being. After those three  days I would return home to solitude. Again, no one would be allowed within three feet of me, nor allowed to be in an enclosed space (read: car) for longer than an hour, nor allowed to use the same dishes or bathroom as me. This was to last for two to three weeks. It is here that I would finally undergo a full body scan to see if I had any metastasizing cancer cells elsewhere in my body. Yet this was not the worst.

The worst part of this whole process was that from the date of my surgery till the date of my full body scan I would be what "they" call Hypo-thyroid. Having no thyroid to speak of I would be absent the T4 hormones it produces and the subsequent T3 which is created and you and I currently use. As you can imagine, due to the Thyroid being the "gas pedal" of the body, this has its side effects. For the duration, and until the replacement hormones kicked in, I would be absent of all energy. I'd constantly feel like I had just ran a marathon and was walking down stairs. I would sleep, a lot. I'd be moody, with fits of anger and irritability. Most of all, I'd be mentally dull. All this together constitutes what thyroid cancer survivors have lovingly termed "Hypo-Hell."

All in all, from the day of my surgery to the day of recovery and ability to return to my life, it would be a four to six month recovery. This was my expectation... that is... until last friday when I met Dr. Mark Lupo and yesterday when I met Dr. Daniel Deems.