One week ago my wife had fine needle aspiration (biopsy) of a mass on her thyroid gland. The pathology report came back as “highly suspicious for papillary carcinoma” aka thyroid cancer. Needless to say, this was shocking news. She has no symptoms, just felt a lump. Actually she felt it a couple of months ago and poo-pooed it as hypertrophy. Not from weight lifting but from straining her neck while breast-feeding and just generally caring for a newborn (we have a 4 1/2 month old). In hindsight she admits that it was likely a major case of denial.
So now she is scheduled for a thyroidectomy (removal) on Tuesday July 26th and they will run a tissue analysis of the affected lobe of the thyroid to see if in fact it is malignant and if so what type of cancer and what stage. Pretty f’in scary.
The good news is that thyroid cancer, if it’s papillary, is very treatable. My wife keeps joking that she has won the cancer lottery, in that thyroid cancer has one of the highest survival/cure rates. Several of the docs have said if they had to have cancer thyroid cancer would be at the top of their list. So that’s encouraging. The survival rates for thyroid cancer are pretty high, upper 90%'s. It’s just so damn weird to be thinking about survival rates and recurrency rates at this time in our life. My wife is 32, otherwise healthy, we have a beautiful 4 1/2 month-old daughter, life couldn’t be better, so we thought.
We’re doing much better now than we were last week, I pretty much had a meltdown last Friday, lot’s of doom and gloom thoughts that I couldn’t suppress. Now we are just focusing on being positive, believing in the statistics and that the odds are securely in our favor.
Yesterday Amy recieved a mysterious package. There was no indication of who ordered it or from where it was ordered, just a bright yellow LIVESTRONG t-shirt delivered to our house with no message. I have an idea who sent it, as we have a good friend who is a die-hard Nike fanatic and also just a very thoughtful friend.
It’s weird how quickly one’s perspective can change. 2 weeks ago when I heard a cancer triumph story, I would think “Wow, good for them, that’s very inspiring…yadda yadda yadda”. Today, totally different story. I was flipping through the channels the other day and happened across the ESPY’s just when they were talking about the Carolina Panther football player who is back on the gridiron after successful cancer treatment, it was really weird how moved I was by that story. Totally different than how I would have been touched in the past.
I think we’re in a good place right now. Don’t get me wrong I’m scared shitless, the thought of losing my wife still haunts me, I’m just better able to suppress it with positive thoughts…just keep thinking about those statistics.
So next Tuesday, if you think of it, around 8:30 am PST please cross your fingers for my wife and our family. Hopefully we’ll get her back out on the bike, pounding the pavement and in the water in the near future. I think her goal of doing the Reebok women’s Tri in September as her first race back post-pregnancy may be out, but there are bigger fish to fry right now.
Slowman, thanks for providing a venue where I can openly vent and ramble on as part of my own therapy.