10 days out from surgery

I have changed the title and address to this blog sooo many times. I decided I am struggling with how random this situation is and so I decided to go to one of my personal obsessions, random number generation. I now have new numbers thanks to my pathology report. Surgery was awful and recovery was like crawling across the floor over broken glass. The more days between me and the hospital, the better it gets. Why did this happen? Why wasn't it worse? Why wasn't it better? Why did D get cancer at stage 4, me at stage 1? I can't make it all stay put today. It's not behaving at all. My surgeon and nurse said they have never seen someone's parathyroids kick back in so quickly before. Am I allowed to be pleased? Will I be punished even more for being such a braggart? Do I need to supplicate myself to faceless gods every day of my life?

CHM (Cancer Hero Model)

I am a little over four weeks away from my surgery. I had to go into the doctor's office yesterday to get blood tests before my appointment next week. I actually tried to imagine how I was going to feel when I was waiting before my surgery and realized there is just no point in assuming anything. I can't hold onto any ideas about my future right now. I am trying not to overwhelm myself learning about all the intricacies of THYCA-TSH! Tgab!! T4! T3! FreeT4! (actually that would be a great t-shirt, only those in the know would find it funny....) I am realizing that because I have the auto-immune situation going on (special, special) I will have to go through hypothyroid hell every year to get scanned for new cancer. Fuck. How am I supposed to feel about all of this?! I don't have a clue. It's like I am suddenly supposed to be zen and live in the moment. It is so hard for me not to be cynical by the Cancer Hero Model, the one that says "this is my path, I am so grateful for this awful thing in my life because it has shown me all of the beauty in the world. I don't sweat the small stuff anymore! I live in the moment now-right now I was just living in that moment!!" Will I ever be that person? I don't want to spout platitudes. Somebody please punch me hard if I do. My friend L said he would bring me flowers in the hospital and I told him he could put one in each of my neck drains, kind of like bud vases. That sent us to more inappropriate humor about weaving daisy chains in my incision. That make sense to me, not the treacly shit which I am sure I will sooner or later have to come to terms with. Who the fuck am I going to be after all of this?! I thought motherhood would change me into a nicer, blander person. Will cancer do the trick?

Descent

So, where to begin? The choking sensation? The fear? The knowing? The biopsy? The MRI? The surgery consult?! What began in December 2006 has continued into 2007 with a diagnosis of papillary cancer. I have already lost track of how many people have told me that this is the best cancer to get. Now, just to be clear, I don't think any cancer is good but this one has extremely good statistics to go with it. Now that it has been a whole month and I have sat with this and researched it almost non-stop, I am finally getting some sense of what is happening to me. I have my surgery five weeks from today. Instead of the nice tidy thyroidectomy, I will have the extended neck dissection up to my left ear to take out lymph nodes as well. Why me? That is my tired response to this! I actually owe my initial worry to someone else whose cancer is far worse, much more advanced, much scarier. I don't like using other people's misfortunes to make me feel better about mine but his cancer was what made me go to the doctor in the first place. I have a whole new appreciation for my body and what little trouble it has been to me all these years. I feel like I am stepping off the moving walkway and am moving backwards into some weird world of medicine and surgery. Descending into what, I don't know. If I can work my mind the right way, I can look at this as some sort of adventure or endurance game. Mostly it's the awful feeling that I am looking at the seed of my mortality and wondering how big is the bloom going to get.