I think I can I think I can...

I'm tired.

Yesterday I tried doing a few normal things. We went to the grocery store and then I rode in the car for about an hour to pick my brother up at the airport. I gave it my all but fell way way short of normal.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I thought by now - almost two weeks since my surgery - I'd be up and running.

I'm not.

I've been sitting around doing nothing all this time, and I still get winded when I walk even a little ways. I came home and just crashed. I feel like a total wuss.

OK. That's enough complaining.

Now I'll look at the good things happening. My neck is feeling much better and my incision is healing really well. I've lost about ten pounds, mainly because it is still hard to swallow. (Yes, that's a GOOD thing!)

I just ran out of steam too soon. The little engine that could ...just couldn't this time.

Nothing to sneeze at

There are a lot of things that are somewhat uncomfortable right now while I am in recovery mode.

Of all the things that aren't particularly pleasant, sneezing just rose to the top of the list. Until now, I had no idea that every single muscle in my neck and chest is required to sneeze.

I don't want to do that again.

If only I could dance

I am not a dancer because, well - basically because I have no rhythm. I used to play the piano, and sing a little. I guess that required some rhythmic ability, but it never required actual move-with-the-beat rhythm. When I was young I even tried to dance occasionally, but could never summon up the courage to really "let go" enough to learn to dance well. My husband on the other hand, has great rhythm, but thinks he doesn't so he won't even try to dance. (Now you know why we didn't dance at our wedding.)

But, you want to know a secret?
Sometimes we dance when no one is watching.

This morning we went to my appointment with the endocrine doctor. We got the news that we desperately wanted to hear. My cancer appears to have been confined to the tumor. This is not only good but could be considered great news. No visible spread means it was caught early.

We were discussing next steps, and the doctor said that while we are very optimistic that it was confined, there are no guarantees that the cancer hasn't spread elsewhere. Only time will reveal if it has spread, or will recur. Then he gave me the choice whether or not to go ahead with radioactive iodine therapy. I chose not to. From what I understand, there is no clear data confirming it will cause the cancer to be worse if we don't do it, so we can do iodine therapy later if it shows up somewhere else. I decided to take my chances.

Where do we go from here? Now the waiting game starts.

Next week I see my surgeon for a follow up, and six weeks from now I will have the first of many blood tests. There will be tests for tumor markers and some kind of other levels I don't quite understand. In six months I will have another ultrasound to create a new "baseline," to watch for changes in the lymph nodes.

So, there you have it. The news is as good as it can possibly be at this point. Am I still concerned? Of course I am. I just had my thyroid gland removed because it was cancerous. But I am filled with hope that it just might be gone.

If you peek in our window tonight, you might just see us waltzing around the house.

Where's the popcorn?

One of the things that makes MD Anderson unique is the "It takes a village" approach. I have one coordinating doctor (the one who did my surgery) and a whole team of additional doctors, physicians assistants, and nurses all focused on my cancer.

Tomorrow will be one week after my thyroidectomy, and I have my first follow up appointment. Hopefully they will have the final pathology in so we will know where we go from here. The news so far has been positive, as no visible cancer was present outside of the thyroid gland. I like good news.

This time when I go to the hospital I will see a new doctor, an endocrinologist. I find it interesting that I won't see my surgeon again until November 4th. My guess is that he will pull all the reports together and help me make sense of it all.

Now there's an interesting thought. Make sense of it all? Cancer? Really? How? Cancer is an insidious disease that doesn't make sense. Maybe instead I should say that the doctor will help me put it into perspective. I think the biggest challenge for me is keeping this in perspective. In the beginning I was really scared, and now I find myself not worried at all. There is probably a healthy blend of both emotions somewhere in the middle, but I haven't found it yet.

I am reminded here of one of my favorite lines from the Summer Mummers Melodrama put on by volunteers every year in Midland, Texas. In every performance for over 60 years the heroine has delivered the line "Oh me, oh my, I know not how to act!" to which the audience (for over 60 years) has responded "You can say that again!"

Well, I know not how to act.

In the eyes of the beholder

I think I'm headed back to the land of the living this morning.

Immediately after the surgery I hurt all over. I was on morphine though, which kept me blissfully not caring about the pain. But then an odd thing happened and I started feeling pain through the morphine. Not fun, not fun at all. I had a horrendous headache, which even the morphine didn't ease up completely. We think the headache was a reaction to the anesthesia, and I ended up staying in the hospital an extra day. Eventually it got better, but my hand started hurting. Of course the hand with the IV would have to be the same hand that has severe arthritis so that got better once the IV was removed. Anyway, it's over. Done. I'm glad.

Today the pain is actually focusing in where it belongs. Now it's a real pain in the neck. But it doesn't hurt all the time. It only hurts when I lie down, get up, turn my head, talk, eat, drink, blow my nose, or brush my teeth. And what if I hiccup? Oh, don't even go there. But other than those circumstances I am almost pain-free. Pain pills are my friends, and I am not ashamed to say that I take advantage of the welcome relief they provide.

So now that I'm feeling better I'll answer the big question. What do I look like when I look in the mirror?

I originally envisioned having a big Frankenstein scar around my neck. But that's not what I have at all. From what I can see so far, the doctor was telling the truth about the whole minimally invasive thing. The incision looks to be about two inches long, and I have a knot the size of a jumbo free-range egg under my skin. Oddly enough there seems to be almost no bruising.

Unfortunately, the rest of my post-op face looks like I have on one of those cheap Halloween masks you buy at the dollar store. You know the kind I mean. I'm talking about the masks that are indistinct and washed out. They all vaguely resemble Richard Nixon. The only difference between me and Tricky Dick right now is that I have a big lump in my neck covered by steri-strips. I don't think he had that.

I'm sorry to say the surgeon didn't give me a face lift. But soon I'll be up to putting on some makeup. Then maybe I won't feel like I have to apologize to the American people every time I glimpse myself in a mirror.

Don't make me go in there alone!

This time of year a lot of non-profit organizations put together haunted houses to raise money. They really are a lot of fun, both for the volunteers and the people who actually pay to get scared. I've helped build haunted houses and I've worked in haunted houses. Just don't ask me to go through one with you. I can't even go through the ones I've built! (Now ask me to scare someone else? Oh yeah... I'm there. Now that's fun.) Anyway, the few times I've summoned up the courage to go through a haunted house, I've only made it through because someone I trust has been holding my hand.

Today most of you just found out that I have cancer. My intent is not to worry you, but to ask if you'll hold my hand as I go through the scary stuff. It's the only way I'll make it.

Just don't look in the closet.

I spent my weekend cleaning the house.

Any time we've gone on vacation I have always made sure the house is clean. I mentioned this to a co-worker once and she said she was the same way. She told me she likes to come home to a clean house too. I agreed with her at the time, but deep down I think the reason might be that I want the house to be clean in case I don't come back.

I don't want anyone to come into the house after I'm gone and see I'm a messy housekeeper. That in itself is funny for two reasons. First, because in reality I am a crappy housekeeper. Second, if something happens to me is anyone actually going to care if my house isn't clean?

Seriously. I've always been a semi-bad housekeeper and it's gotten much worse now that I travel so much for my job. The last thing I want to do when I come home is scrub a toilet. (Disclaimer here: I do have a wonderful house husband helping me take care of a lot of this, but he is really a "touch up" kinda guy. He doesn't do the heavy-duty cleaning unless he's following me around. But it's okay. He fixes dinner, washes dishes, vacuums, and does windows. I like that.)

Anyway, if you just glanced at our house on any given day you'd think I was only a minimally bad at keeping things clean and orderly. If you are just doing a casual walk-through you might notice a little dust, or a mirror that has splash spots. That's because you aren't looking very close, and you certainly didn't look behind the closed doors. But, be warned - if you open a closet door do so at your own risk. All the stuff I am too lazy to organize, all the stuff I really need to throw out, all the stuff I am just not ready to deal with yet ends up in the closet.

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about all the things I need to do before I have surgery. At the top of my list was making sure the house is clean, so this weekend I cleaned. To the casual observer everything looks great.

Now I wish I had time to clean my closets.

All in a days work.

Yesterday and today I met with my surgeon, doctor, a gazillion lab techs, physicians assistants, and nurses. It seemed like every one of them wanted to take my blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen level. I had X-rays, EKGs and ultrasounds. I am happy to say I passed all their tests. That wasn't too surprising though, since all the questions were the same. By the time they finished I think they had drained me of all my blood and pee. (OK, so maybe you didn't really want to know that part. )

What does all this mean? It means that on Monday at 10:30 a.m. I will have surgery to remove my thyroid and some lymph glands. The doctor said the video-guided surgery will probably last about three hours, and if all goes according to plan will be minimally invasive. Somehow I find it hard to believe that any surgery removing an entire gland is "minimally invasive" but, hey. What do I know?

I would like it to mean a smaller scar. Not that I'm vain mind you... at my age I have kind of given up on the whole "looks matter" approach but think I'd like a smaller scar anyway. I asked the doc if he could do a little mini-face lift as long as he was digging around in there. He laughed and said he gets asked that a lot, but - no. Oh well, I tried.

From what I understand, later on I will have Radioactive Iodine to try to kill the rest of the cancer cells. I haven't asked a lot about that yet because it happens later. Right now I am just working on getting past Monday.

Is there a secret handshake?

So far very few people are aware of my diagnosis, but I have to be practical in all this. Yesterday I was arranging to have time off work, and all the other things necessary to be out of the office for a while. I decided to confide in one of my coworkers who happens to be a three-time cancer survivor. I admire her for her sense of humor and directness and knew she might be able to offer some much needed work-related moral support.

One of the things she told me as I was leaving her office was "welcome to the club." Now I didn't see this as weird at all, because I had already thought about it. I knew I had already become a statistic when I heard the diagnosis. You know, that one-in-however-many-will-be-diagnosed-with-cancer-in-their-lifetime statistic.

I've never been much of a joiner, so now that I'm in the club I have lots of questions so I'll know how to act. Is there a code of conduct? A dress code? Is there a tree house?

Hopefully as the next few weeks unfold I will have a lot more answers. The scariest part of all this for me is simply not knowing.

Parking allowed in designated spaces only

My surgery is scheduled for Monday, October 18th.

I will have a thyroidectomy, and we'll find out that day if there is involvement outside of the thyroid gland.

It sounds awfully scary.

But look at the bright side... It's not quite as scary as trying to find a parking spot at the Medical Center. Kind of puts things into perspective doesn't it?

If I ran the zoo.

My husband emailed this to me at work and it makes me laugh every time I read it,
so I thought I would share it. 

I realized something while I was on my walk.

You went to work for the Red Cross, and we had a house fire.
You went to work for Midland Community Theatre, we got season tickets and I won the McLaren.
You went to work for MD Anderson, and this happens.

If you had gone to work for the Atlanta Zoo we'd have a panda by now.

He makes me laugh when I need it most. I think I'll keep him. 

Waiting for God

It's really hard right now to not think of all the "what if's."

I mean, what if the cancer has metastasized? What if I get a bad prognosis? I don't want to think about it but I can't help it. Hopefully I will have some answers soon. I don't like not knowing.

I need to know.

What if? God knows. I guess I'll just have to wait.

Here's yer Sign

So, here’s the reality so far.
I have Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma with a Follicular Variant.

When the pathologist gave me the preliminary report on Friday I wasn’t all that surprised. I somehow expected it. In fact, before we went to the hospital I told my husband that I had the feeling my life as I knew it was about to change forever.

The pathologist told me not to go look up my cancer on the internet, so of course I went home and looked it up.

The good news is that my cancer (did I really call it my cancer?) can be a very treatable form of cancer. The bad news is that it is still cancer, and it can take many different paths. What if it has already spread?

After I see my doctor I'll have more answers I am sure. But I haven’t talked to my doctor yet, and for now I only have the preliminary pathology report. I know that there will be more tests and many more visits to the hospital.

I have cancer.

I don’t want to do this. I am scared.

Tomorrow is another day.

Today I found out that I have cancer.

I have known for some time that something has been wrong. I put off going to the doctor for several reasons – fear, worry for my family, but mostly because it just didn’t fit into my work schedule.

I have things to do. I don’t have time to be sick because I have a job to do. But you know, somehow rationalizing about it doesn’t help right now. I don't think I have a choice but to think about this.

Today I became a patient at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. There, I said it.

But I'll think about it tomorrow.

Today I’m not ready.