Oh Sandy

Things that went according to plan this week:

My parents got here on Sunday to spend the week with us while I recovered from surgery #2.

We went to work Monday morning.

Things that did NOT go according to plan this week:

We came home from work early on Monday due to increasingly bad weather.

My surgery was cancelled.

We lost power Monday night.

We didn't get power back until this morning.

For the most part, Sandy left us relatively untouched. Obviously, there was the whole power outage thing, but we didn't flood, we didn't see any sign of wind damage to our house, and we are all safe and sound (even if we were a little chilly).  We're learning that we're lucky to have our power back at this point - a lot of people still don't (my sister included), and the power company is saying it might be Monday before everyone has power again.  We're also lucky to have a very generous neighbor who let us (practically insisted on it) siphon power from his whole-house generator by running extension cords from his house through our window.  He wanted us to plug everything in (TV, internet, fireplace, fridge, phones, etc.), promising that the generator could handle it all.  We were a little wary of putting too much on the extension cords, so we just plugged in our fridge and charged a couple phones, but that alone was a HUGE help.

We actually ended up having a blast both Monday and Tuesday nights. My best friend and her fiancé were over for dinner on Monday night. We made it through dinner and dessert and were partway through a game of Settlers of Catan when we lost power, so we finished the game by candlelight. Having also lost power, they came back over on Tuesday night and we did everything by candlelight that time: cooked dinner, cleaned up, and played more Catan.

The biggest stress was surgery being cancelled - I don't like when my plans get changed on me.  Completely understanding why it would be cancelled (the hospital was running on back-up generators) doesn't make it not stressful.  Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with the doctor's office this morning, and am rescheduled for surgery on Monday.  So for now, I am still thyroid partly included.

Thank You

So much can be said about finding blessings in tough times, about friends in need - so very true.

Thank you to everyone for all of the love, thoughts, prayers, messages, kind words, etc.  All of your support and encouragement is absolutely invaluable to me.  I love hearing from everyone, whether we talk every day or haven't been in touch lately.  And whether it is through phone calls and texts, emails and Facebook, or even through this blog, hearing from you helps me stay positive.

Please keep it coming :)

Thyroid Cancer Awareness

If you would like to learn more about thyroid cancer:
     http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/thyroid
     http://www.thyca.org/
     http://www.checkyourneck.com/

If you would like something to sport to show your support and promote awareness:
     http://www.choosehope.com/category/thyroid-cancer-teal-pink-blue

Cancer Quilt - Part 1

When I first started quilting two years ago, I absolutely fell in love with the art - both the physical making of the quilt and the concept of taking small, separate pieces and putting them together into a beautiful whole.  Seeing the whole thing evolve from choosing the pattern and the fabrics all the way through to a finished quilt is incredibly rewarding, and so far (knock on wood), each quilt has looked better at the end than I imagined it would.

Making a quilt now makes perfect sense to me, not only because it's something that I love to do, but also because it's something over which I am in complete control.  I get to decide everything: the size, the pattern, the colors, the fabrics, the block size, the arrangement, the borders, the backing, the stitching, the thread color, the binding - every decision is mine and is not dependent on what the doctor says or when I can get an appointment.  If I feel like spending three hours working on it in the evening, that's fine.  If I'm too tired and don't feel like even looking at it, that's fine too.  It feels strangely like I can take my cancer and put it into the quilt ... cut it into small pieces and arrange it the way I want and make it into something better.

Since I am still relatively new to the world of quilting (this will be my 4th quilt) and I haven't done anything particularly advanced yet, I knew I wanted whatever pattern I chose to be fairly simple.  It needed to be something that I wouldn't have to think about too hard while making, something that wouldn't add any stress in trying to perfect a difficult block.  After a little bit of looking, I settled on a Disappearing 9 Patch, which is very easy but can look completely different depending on fabric choice and placement.  Picking the colors was easy:  the awareness colors for thyroid cancer are teal, pink, and blue, so the quilt will be in those colors.

Next time - choosing the fabrics!

May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

I've never been a big fan of probability and statistics in general, but even less so when they are mixed with such serious matters as my own health.

It's hard to retrospectively talk about how the odds looked good each step of the way.  Something like 90-95% of all thyroid growths are benign.  Even once it was determined to be a solid nodule, the likelihood that it was benign was still around 80%.

But this was part of how I knew I liked my surgeon the first time I met him.  He said:  It's great if you're in the 80% that's benign, but if you're in the 20%, you don't care at all about the 80% because for you, it was cancer 100% of the time.

Exactly.

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During the first surgery, they removed the right lobe and the isthmus of my thyroid.  There were two nodules: one was the giant one that I had found, measuring in at 4 cm, and one was much smaller, at 0.7 cm.  Pathology results showed that both nodules were cancerous, but there was no sign that the cancer had spread.

I have papillary thyroid cancer, which is the most common and least aggressive of the thyroid cancers.  Specifically, mine is a follicular variant, but that isn't important since all variants of papillary cancer are treated the same way and have the same good prognosis:  totally treatable and curable.  After getting the rest of my thyroid taken out, I'll have to go through radioactive iodine treatment to kill any thyroid cells that are left behind, and then I'll be on replacement thyroid hormones for life.

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I was looking at a chart earlier today about the odds of getting different types of cancer and the risk of dying from that particular cancer.  I've read a lot about how sometimes thyroid cancer is called the "good kind of cancer" because it is so treatable.  Obviously, this is a poor choice of words, since there is no such thing as a good cancer.  But at the same time, I do feel at least a little lucky, because it could be so much worse.

The Day Everything Changed

It was Monday, August 20th, and I had just gotten back to my office after lunch.  I was playing with my necklace while I read some emails, and I felt a lump on the right side of my neck just above my collar bone.  After going to the bathroom to check if there was actually something there (yes, it was visible), I did what anyone in my generation would do - I googled it.  And then I got on the phone and scheduled a doctor's appointment for later that afternoon.

At the doctor's office, they took blood to check my thyroid function and had me schedule an appointment for an ultrasound.  The blood work came back normal, which meant that my thyroid was functioning as it should and I didn't have one of the thyroid-related autoimmune diseases.  But when we got the ultrasound results, it showed that the lump was a solid nodule, which probably meant nothing but might be something and so I needed to get a thyroid biopsy to check.

The biopsy itself was quick and painless, although we ended up having to wait about an hour and a half for a 5 minute procedure.  (The technician who assisted on the procedure was so nice about it though - she felt so bad that we had to wait so long because they had gotten backed up that she got us lunch passes to the cafeteria.)  Unfortunately, my results came back as suspicious for follicular cancer, which meant that I had to have surgery to remove the nodule even though it might be benign (~80% of the time, they are) because they couldn't tell for sure.

We met with a surgical oncologist on September 19th (just under a month after finding the nodule), I had surgery on October 2nd, and on October 15th, I learned that I did indeed have cancer - papillary carcinoma, follicular variant.

It may be strange that the only date that is so concretely stuck in my head is August 20th.   That's not when I learned that I would need surgery, or when I found out for sure that it was cancer.  But that's the day that I found the lump on my neck - the day when everything really did change.

The Reason

Let me start off by answering some questions.

Why am I writing a blog?  

Because a cancer diagnosis at age 26 was one of the last things I ever would have guessed would happen.  Cancer is not something you can control, and that does not jive well with my personality - I like to have things organized, I like to plan, and I like to know what's coming next.  So in an effort to regain some control, I decided two things.  The first hit me very quickly: I'm going to make myself a cancer quilt.  I love to craft and I find it very cathartic, so I can channel my energy into making something that will later serve as a testament to what I've been through.  The second thing was more of a logical progression: I've found that so far, the most exhausting thing has been telling people what's going on.  I want all my friends and family to know what's happening, but I don't want to have to keep rehashing all the details.  Which meant it made perfect sense to keep a blog.  I'm hoping that this will also be a good way to channel my energy, especially in the times when I have less of it and sitting is all I can manage.  And I realized that as an added bonus, I can show the progression of the quilt here too.

What's with the blog title?

I'm holding onto the old adage that laughter is the best medicine.  As I was searching online for some swag (because every situation calls for some good accessories!), I came across this:

It just made me laugh, so I'm just holding onto it for now and I'll get it for myself when I'm done treatment.  It's only half true right now, but after October 30th, I'll be completely sans thyroid.

What about the tagline?

Initially, I wanted the blog address to be thyroidnotincluded, but that was already taken.  I ultimately decided that this was a good thing, because maybe something less cancer-focused would be good.  I settled on something that comes from one of my favorite quotes of all time (a line from Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan), and I just modified it slightly for the tagline.  

The Result
And so this blog was born.  Maybe it will be helpful for someone else, but if not, that's okay.  Even though my initial intent was to write this for other people, I realized that it's mainly for me - to help me organize my thoughts, to chronicle what I'm going through, and to help me remember that "We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can always be braver than we expect."