The whole story, and nothing but the whole story...

Here I sit, in quarantine. It might sound glamorous, but sadly I don’t get a cool bubble to bounce around in, not even a secluded wing in the hospital with all-access cable. It’s just me and the four walls of my room, and season 3 of Downton Abbey (Matthew died? What?!). The only time in my life I’ve ever kept a blog was while I was living in New Zealand a few years ago and that only lasted a few weeks until I fell in love with the land and people and didn’t take the time to write on it anymore. Several friends and family members have asked me if I would start one to keep them updated on my current prognosis and how my life is going, so I’m finally caving in. A huge, HUGE, shout out to my friend Emily Olson for her extreme patience, organization, and willingness to help me get the ball rolling on doing this.

Back in April 2012 I was knee deep in my first year of Teach for America. For those of you who don’t know what Teach for America is, it’s a non-profit organization geared towards closing the achievement gap amongst students in America, or as some would also call it an opportunity gap which exists amongst the discrepancies of the educational system. You can learn more about it by clicking here. My first year as a corps member was very stressful, albeit rewarding. I was feeling exhausted and worn down, but I chalked it up to a stressful first year navigating teaching in my new surroundings. I didn’t want to come across as a hypochondriac; nevertheless I went to visit my doctor and started doing different things to figure out why I just wasn’t feeling “well”. Over the summer I journeyed to Europe. I told myself if I survived my first year in Arizona I deserved to do something incredible, so I visited Greece, the country at the top of my bucket list, and several other amazing places. It was rejuvenating and great, but I returned still not quite feeling like myself.

A new school year began and I slowly but surely became more and more worn down and finally took the time to re-visit my doctor during my fall break in October. I’m a bit of a, errr, an extreme, workaholic at times and I have a difficult time taking time off work, so sadly it did take me this long to go back to the doctor. My gynecologist wanted to do a whole gamut of tests on me but before doing so happened to feel my thyroid and said it felt a little large but that it was probably nothing. She said she wanted me to visit my primary care physician before tackling any other tests just to have it checked out. Well, I didn’t have a PCP. Remember, I don’t take time off work, or go to doctors. I panicked because I only had one more day of fall break and didn’t want to take time off to visit more doctors. Through a string of miracles, I was able to get in that same day to see a PCP and also that very same day to have an ultrasound of my thyroid. They did indeed find a nodule. A 1 cm nodule is common in women, but mine was 4 cm, not common. I was referred to an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor who said my nodule was too large to biopsy as it could yield a false negative or false positive and that we’d have to remove half my thyroid. I didn’t think much of it at this point and swallowed the thought of taking the time off work and went ahead and scheduled my hemi-thyroidectomy for the first week in December.

My surgery went great and they said my initial pathology report looked good with no signs of cancer, but that the full report would come back in a couple of days. The mass they ended up removing, in addition to half of my thyroid, was the “size of a cup of jello” the doctor said, aka—massive.

On Wednesday, December 5^th, 2012, my mom and I were visiting Home Depot, picking out some flowers to plant by my front door. My ENT called and said to take out a pen and piece of paper because I would want to write this down. He said they found a rare type of thyroid cancer on my pathology report called Hurthle Cell Carcinoma. It’s typically found in males over 50. Sure, I would get the butch type of cancer. I said ok, handed the phone to my mom and walked away as the tears started streaming down my cheeks. This might sound a little dramatic, but I just wasn’t expecting this news. Everything had gone so well up until this point that I hadn’t prepared for this possibility at all.

When people used to tell me they had cancer my first thoughts were usually one, what kind, and two, are you going to die? Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume we all have similar thoughts going through our heads when people drop the “c-word”. I know people meant well when they would say this, but inevitably people would say “Oh, thyroid cancer? That’s the best kind to have!” Cancer? Excuse me? There’s a good kind? That’s news to me! Let’s trade places then, shall we? The kind I was diagnosed with was wasn’t one of those “good kinds”. It was one of the rare kinds of thyroid cancer that can metastasize, or spread. Hurthle Cell Carcinoma is less than 3% of all thyroid cancer diagnoses’ so not as much is known about it unfortunately.

This diagnosis resulted in me going back in to have the rest of my remaining thyroid removed, or a complete thyroidectomy. I was given the option of doing the surgery right before Christmas, or the beginning of January, and I opted for January for one big, selfish, reason—I didn’t want to give up the week before winter break with my students. It’s such a magical happy time with them. I know many thought I was crazy for postponing for this reason, but I did nonetheless and don’t regret it for a moment.

The second surgery went as expected. During my hospital stay I had the privilege of being awakened every hour during the middle of the night to have blood drawn and my vitals taken. At one point I remember hearing an old man down the hallway from me screaming “Don’t come and bother me again!!” At that point I decided to not give the nurses a hard time, ever. Although they did lose my permanent medical chart while I was in the hospital. Then I contracted pink eye and bronchitis right after leaving the hospital. I remember going into Walgreens the day after I was released from the hospital, mind you I could barely even whisper at this point, and I said to the pharmacist “Look, I have thyroid cancer and just got out of the hospital. Now I have bronchitis and pink eye. Is there anything you can do to help me?” She just looked at me and said “Ummm, no.” Seriously. Looking back she probably thought I was insane.

The pathology report for this second surgery revealed I had a second type of cancer, a papillary cancer, which is a more common kind of thyroid cancer, so that was better news, but still crazy to think that I had not one, but two different types of cancer.

After the surgery I met with my endocrinologist who explained to me the process of doing radiation and what the future had in store for me in terms of treatment, etc. Then I had to begin the dreaded iodine free diet.  In order to prepare for radiation I could only eat fruits and veggies basically, with a few exceptions, for the next few weeks. Sounds healthy, right? Well, considering that I also had to go off all my thyroid medicines and couldn’t really metabolize anything, nothing would really be “healthy” for me. Instead it was giving up cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, egg yolks, chocolate, bread, rice, fish, (sushi!!), meat, and basically anything processed and enjoyable. Oh the life of a vegan.  I pretty much just stopped eating because it was really hard. I wouldn’t recommend doing that.

This last Friday I went and swallowed a radioactive iodine pill and began my period of quarantine. No, I didn’t start glowing. That might have actually been cool. Instead I just started throwing up. I didn’t even eat. I couldn’t keep down water, sprite, or as it seemed the air I breathed. Imagine the worst case of the flu you’ve ever had. Now multiply it, times 100. That might bring you up to speed on the extreme nausea I felt. I’m finally on some anti-nausea medicine now that a certain time frame has passed and it’s safe for me to take it, and I can keep food down when I take it.

I wish I could say being in quarantine has been incredible and I’ve done every little project imaginable. Sadly, I feel so depleted of energy all I’ve done in quarantine is sleep. And sleep. And sleep some more. And now, write this blog entry. I’m going to consider this the height of my quarantine productivity. So thanks for reading this juicy tale all, there will surely be more to come…