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Today (August 3rd) is the one-year anniversary of my surgery to remove my cancerous thyroid. It's been quite a year. My surgery was 8 hours long. The doctors removed 26 lymph nodes, 16 of which were cancerous. The largest lymph node was the size of a golf ball. I was in the hospital for 4 days, two days longer than expected because the fluid wouldn't stop draining from my neck. Apparently thyroid cancer is slow acting and so this has been developing for about 10 years.
I found out that I had cancer the day after I graduated from high school. I went into the doctor a few days before that thinking that I had mono because I was tired all the time. I've had this problem for a while, but it had been getting to extremes lately. My doctor told me to go in for a CAT scan. The day after my CAT scan, I was told I had cancer. First they thought it was Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which would have required chemo. I was incredibly scared. A few days after, I went in for a biopsy and we discovered that it was thyroid cancer. Treatable through surgery and not chemo, thank God. Still. It was cancer. I had cancer. The surgery was completely successful and they said I would make a full recovery.
2 and a half weeks after my surgery and three days after the end of my scheduled "recovery time," I started college in a new town with new people I'd never met. The only person I even remotely knew in the entire city was my brother on the other side of town. I was still recovering as well, so I found it incredibly hard to meet new people and engage them in conversation without becoming exhausted. It took me about 3 months before I really started feeling myself and by that time depression had set in at the prospect of having no friends at college.
Luckily I found a great set of friends at college and, by the second semester, really came into my own and started to enjoy myself. It was still difficult for me, as it always is for a college freshman struggling with depression, but I got by.
The good news is that thyroid cancer is directly linked to depression. Low thyroid levels lead to lethargy and depression. Hopefully, with continued monitoring of my thyroid levels, I will continue to improve and function better than ever. Of course, it took them 10 years to figure out that I had cancer, even with my glands swollen to extremes in my neck. Oh well.
It's been a year. Things are getting better. But I still can't help thinking about it. I only knew about this cancer for three months, but it seems like it's been a part of my life forever. It's part of me. I'm a cancer survivor. That's just a scary statement. I don't want to be a cancer survivor. I want to be cancer free. But it'll stay with me for the rest of my life. I have to take these little blue pills until I die. My body even gave me a little remembrance of it. I have the scar on my neck, which people say will go away eventually. I hope it will. I also can't feel the right side of my neck. It's numb, and will be forever. The doctors did such extensive work in my neck that they damaged some of my nerves permanently. I don't mind. It reminds me of a time with things were worse. If things get bad, I can at least laugh to myself and say, "Well, at least I don't have cancer."
I feel like I want to cry today, but I don't know whether the tears would be out of relief or self-pity. Perhaps a combination of both.
Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be so long, but I really wanted to share.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Well, sadly, I'd been feeling tired and lathargic for about 3 months before I finally broke down and went to a doctor. And this was after about 2 years of depression. You wonder why no one checked my thyroid levels, as that is a leading cause of depression. Oh well. Better late then never though, I say.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Wow, freshman year is tough enough without having to deal with all of this. Good for you for slogging through! ((Evie))
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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