thywarrior2013and2025

I had such high hopes for this Summer. I wanted to rest, read books, paint, and mainly exercise. Ride my stationary bike, walk with my husband. Perhaps take a few weekend get aways. Have fun. As a helper for my older parents, with a full time teaching job where I work 9-10 hours a day, and with 2 cats and a dog finding time is hard. Yet this summer the planets aligned and I was to get ME TIME. Maybe even a Honeymoon I had never gotten after getting married for the first time at 53 years of age!

Let me step back and say that at the end of the school year I found out I had to switch rooms at my Middle School. I had to move 29 years of therapy materials and all 100+ games for the Game Club upstairs with one student helper and my husband. It was exhausting yet a week after school closed we finished and even got 1/2 the boxes unpacked. I was excited about the new room after all that and ordered curtains and some new posters. I thought to myself ‘Next year is gonna ROCK!’ When I left the school that final Friday I was there I was ready to rest a week and then start FUN!

But that was not to be.

On Thursday June 19th my Endocrinologist called out of the blue. I had recently had my yearly neck scan yet in the chaos of moving my class I forgot about it. Usually the doctor simply sends an email saying all looks well. After 12 years post cancer, 11 years officially in remission, the tests were ‘no biggie’. However, when the phone rang I cried out in fear. She was not supposed to call! I did not expect that sound to come from me. I answered the phone and she told me that I had a suspicious, large, irregularly shaped lymph node in my neck. It was missing what is known as the fatty hilum which could mean something was going on. I was told that I would have to have a biopsy in the hospital nuclear medicine surgical site.

What followed was 10 days me dealing with the Coumadin Clinic and Kaiser Hospital to get a plan in place to wean off blood thinners and give myself Enoxaparin injections to prevent clots in my blood for the 5 days prior to the biopsy on Monday 6/30/2025. Ten days of increasing anxiety and severe depression. Ten days of emotional mood swings and many, many tears. The biopsy procedure, while painful, went as well as could be expected. I went home with a sore neck that swelled significantly the following few days. I had a migraine and my fibromyalgia went nuclear with the stress. I rested and with the love of my family set about healing. Telling myself that all would be fine.

Then BAM!

On Thursday July 3rd at 6:30 PM my cell phone rang. It was Kaiser. It was my Doctor. I knew then that my world as I knew it was ending. I answered and was told that I had a “Pathologic appearing right cervical lymph node with microcalcifications.” That the biopsy results came back positive for CANCER. At first my doctor was like “So we just go in and take it out. No worries, it’s done in outpatient and you go home the same day.” Now I LOVE my Endocrinologist who always stands up for what I need. I know that she has hundreds of patients. So I gently reminded her of my health issues in the past and the many times I have almost died. I brought up all my concerns regarding whether I could even take some of the pre-tests she had mentioned. She immediately looked up more of my history and agreed that we would need a team approach towards fighting this. I emailed her my concerns and needs and informed my primary doctor as well.

I made the conscious choice to not tell my parents until after the holiday weekend as Friday was my dad’s 83rd birthday. I wanted them to have a good weekend. I also needed time to process through everything and get mentally ready. Now they know and now I have my first surgical meeting with one of the surgeons to be involved this Thursday morning. Now I sit back and wait for the rest of my WORLD TO CRASH DOWN.

Yet I will not give in easily. I will always fight hard for my life.

#thyroidcancer #fibromyalgia #anxiety #depression