I had begun to call my first go around with thyroid cancer The Big Inconvenience. I had survived. I found it doable and at this point it mostly felt inconvenient. I was still trying to figure out how to live with HYPOPARA and I was still managing my daily meds. Both with no end in sight. The endocrinologist I began my journey with had retired and I began to see the Nurse Practitioner. JG was great. She spent time with me and listened when I had issues. I really felt like a person and not an appointment time slot. She found part 2 of my cancer. It was 2013 and for the last eight years I had been having the regular blood-work and ultrasounds. When things showed up she wanted me to go for a biopsy. I had done all this before and I had opinions about who I would go to. She patiently send me to someone more specialized in delicate area biopsy. My new Cytopathology person  Dr R was amazing.  It was still painful but a much better experience than the first go around. I was surprised with the results because thyroid cancer was supposed to be the easy one. No big deal in the cancer world. The word about town was that it was curable. We next had to find a surgeon and I had gotten pretty choosy after the first experience. I landed with Dr O.  Since this wasn’t my first party I felt I knew what to expect. Not a lot of the process had changed. The nurse would start to go over things with me and I would inject my own view of what was going to happen. I am sure I was annoying but I felt annoyed. There are lots of important details that they don’t exactly share up front. I want the whole story. I want to know what to expect and to have a plan. I can veer from the plan but I need to have one in place. Aside from the problems with my calcium levels (hypoparathyroidism) following the surgery, everything else went fairly smoothly. I liked my new surgeon. He made another scar right above my old one.

I worked as much as I could during the process and I had lots of help. Off my thyroid meds all my appointments took 15-30 minutes longer and I had trouble doing all the extras. Laundry, scheduling and cleaning up was difficult at best. At home I was equally worthless.  I was exhausted in the morning and worse in the evening. I couldn’t take a shower without resting before I could dry off. One day my girlfriend left me something in my mailbox and I thought, well that’s too bad it might as well be in Ireland. I thought about driving down to get it but didn’t know where my keys were. Chronic fuzzy brain was also a problem. Please don’t ask me anything because answering questions was a struggle. I love how each time you go to the doctor they ask the same questions over and over. I wanted to tell them that we could just look at my computer file and that way we would both know the answer.

A lot of what I experienced has been lost due to my lack of memory or is mixed up between surgeries and treatments. I did learn that the human body can mindlessly function through things that are habitual. I learned that suffering grows my faith and my relationship with Jesus. I have learned that we need each other. That shared experiences are the things that hold us together and cause us to love more deeply. That it is okay to ask for help and what a blessing it is to receive needed help that you didn’t have to ask for. We have all asked someone, Is there anything I can do? I have learned that to be a friend is to just do it.

In faith, Deanna