The Thyroid Diaries: Part 1 of 9

In 2001 BB ("Before Blogging"), I was diagnosed with a malignant but slow-growing variety of thyroid cancer. While going through some old directories on my computer, I stumbled on a web page diary I kept at the time to keep friends and family up to date. I figured I'd post those entries here because, in retrospect, the whole experience was sort of funny.

25 April, 2001: Mysteries and Mayhem

A number of months ago, I just happened to be rubbing my neck and swallowing at the same time and noticed a hard knot along my windpipe, slightly below and to the left of my Adam's Apple. It feels like it's maybe a half inch in diameter, and it's not tender. I sort of blew it off, figuring it was one of those inflamed lymph nodes you get sometimes from fighting a cold.

When the pesky thing hadn't gone away by the time I was due for my annual physical, I made a mental note to mention it to my internist--who has subsequently had me running all over the place, being irradiated and stabbed. Here's the short history:

• My primary physician (internist) says, judging from the position of the thing, that I appear to have a "thyroid nodule". This could be the result of a number of things, among which are scarring from an old infection, inflammation due to some current issue, and some sort of tumor. He tells me that it's very rare for men to have thyroid problems and, statistically, cancer would be the least likely possibility. Then again, I recently took the Gender Test, which concluded with 86% certainty that I'm a woman. But even if it's cancer, he says thyroid tumors are among the most successfully treated.
• So... it's off for an appointment with the department of nuclear medicine at the hospital. The drill here was for me to show up, barely awake, at 9:00 in the morning, sit in a waiting room full of people who were obviously (to my worried mind, at least) dying. After filling out lots of forms, freeing the hospital from any responsibility should I be inadvertently rendered sterile or brain dead, I got to go into a storage room/office and take a small capsule of radioactive iodine.
• Next day: back to the nuclear medicine department, where they scanned me to get their reference radiation levels in preparation to calibrate the thyroid scanning machine for my test. Which was never done, because it turns out that I didn't absorb any of the iodine into my thyroid. "How can this be?" I asked, now certain that my long-time relationship with Murphy was once again making itself known.

  "Well," he said, nervously fingering his malpractice waiver forms, "I don't know. Your readings are inconsistent, and with your TSH levels, the only way you could have not absorbed any iodine is if your thyroid has completely shut down." Quoting Sherlocke Holmes--I think--I told him that when you eliminate the impossible, the answer must be what's left, no matter how improbable: the thing's an alien implant.

  He didn't get it.

• Back to my internist, who, in the absence of much useful information from the puzzled nuclear doctor, wants to schedule me with a top-notch endocrinologist. So top-notch, in fact, that I can't get an appointment until May 21. I asked the receptionist if she figured I might drop dead before then. She said she reckoned I wouldn't; but if I do, I should be sure to leave a message on their system and she'd try to work me in sooner.

  Oh, such a laugh we had over that one.

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