My Experience With Thyroid Cancer

On May 2, my endocrinologist called and told me that I did in fact have cancer. My first instinct with this is to end the blog post there...but how could I be such an open book about everything else and then be private with this? I look back on that day and things were already put in place that I didn't foresee. I didn't really feel like being at work that day and when my eye started hurting for some reason, I decided to ask to leave early. That's not normal for me, so I was allowed to go home. I was sitting on the couch when a strange 916 number called. I answered because I assumed it was someone at Kaiser. Somehow I've never put a single Kaiser phone number in my phone. It was Dr. Chan. She asked where I was and I said I was at home. (I would ordinarily be at work, though. This was around 4pm). I think if I said I were at work or if I were driving, she would have asked me to call her back, but I was just at home. She didn't beat around the bush. She jumped r...

The next step was to be referred to a surgeon. I worried about that. Dr. Chan said that she had a few surgeons in mind that she hoped I would be I guess "matched up" with. I got a call from Head & Neck Surgery at Kaiser Roseville. Clearly they were not trying to be sensitive when they named this department. The receptionist set an appointment for me with Dr. Doctor. Before I could say anything, she said, "Yes, his last name is Doctor." The first chance I got, I went to Dr. Doctor's page on the Kaiser website and I tried to learn all I could about it. Based on where he went to school and his service in the air force as a head & neck surgeon in Afghanistan, I felt confident that he would do a good job. Seriously though...I doubt Kaiser would have provided anything less. For some reason, though, I had to cancel that consultation appointment and reschedule. I really can't remember why. Maybe because I was working full time and trying to pull decent...

Dr. Chan had rushed the results of the biopsy so I wouldn't have to wait as long to know if I had cancer. The biopsy was on Tuesday and on that Friday afternoon, I was driving to Pacifica to visit my cousin Nichole. I was between Fairfield and Vallejo on I-80 when Dr. Chan called. She said the results came back benign; the nodule isn't cancerous. I didn't know much about all of this stuff yet. Seriously. So I didn't really rejoice like everyone else did. The way I saw it, I'd have surgery either way. But I guess it felt right to me that I didn't have cancer. It's out of my comfort zone to be someone who has a health issue. But if I had to have one, I really didn't see myself having cancer. So I shrugged it off and waited for the next step.