A week ago at this time I was struggling to eat a really disgusting vegetarian lasagna dish on my flight from Rio de Janeiro to Houston, TX. Sad to leave Brazil, since it is a marvelous country, full of surprises and wonderful people. Sad to be heading back to reality. A reality that included finding out exactly what kind and stage the cancer was at when they cut it out of me.
Really happy to be returning to my own house, with my own bathtub and bed. Living in a hostel has many benefits, mainly in the cheapness and the scads of interesting people you meet. The downside is the lack of privacy if you're living in one of the dorm rooms (but also an excellent way to meet people). The last week in Rio we stayed at 2 different hostels (long story). The first was $20 Reis per night and we did not miss it when we left it as early as our hangovers would permit the next morning. The second hostel was delightful, 2 blocks from Ipanema beach, included breakfast and was the venue for meeting a number of awesome and fascinating people. An insight into the cheapness factor for you - when I was in Rio a few weeks ago we stayed at a hotel right on Copacabana beach, ocean view. Top 3 hotel in Rio according to Trip Advisor. Was lovely. One night at that hotel cost the same as the entire week at the hostel. The hostel also included breakfast.
So I'm sold on this whole hosteling thing. But I'm not here tonight to talk about the Brazil trip. I think I will write about the trip one of these days. I had grand notions of keeping a travel journal as I have in the past, but I didn't carry a notebook with me, I could never find a pen, and most of the time I was too busy keeping busy to think about what I could or should write. So that will have to wait. I'm really here to talk about the dr appointment I had the other day.
Originally I was supposed to see the dr on September 4, the day after labour day. I blithely changed my flight home to September 2 sometime in the second week of August. That flight got me home at 7pm on September 3. Perfect, I thought. Only a few hours to ridiculously obsess over what the dr might tell me about the cancer. Except.
I needed blood drawn. It had been 6 weeks since the surgery and the dr would want to know my parathyroid hormone levels, the Caclium levels and oh yeah, the thyroid hormone levels cascading through my decrepit being. (Trust me, spend 2 1/2 weeks with someone under 25 who likes climbing mountains, hiking and running and jumping off of cliffs and you'd feel decrepit too. I like these things myself under normal circumstances but I give myself a pass since I? Had freaking cancer, major surgery and had been mysteriously sick for weeks before the whole cancer thing reared its head. I was understandably out of shape. Still. I started running again while I was in Rio for self preservation). After a few days it occured to me that I wouldn't be able to get my blood drawn before that Sept 4 appointment since last Monday was a holiday and the lab would be closed at 3pm.
Nuts. That meant I'd have to change my dr appointment.
There's a 2-3 hour time difference between home and the various parts of Brazil I visited. I never could quite remember to call the office at a time that worked. Eventually I managed it while sipping a caipirinhia on copacabana beach in front of the Copacabana Palace hotel. New appointment time: Sept 6 at 10:45 am.
Dammit. I now had 2 days at home to struggle remain calm about the results.
It didn't matter how often people told me I shouldn't worry about the results - I KNEW there was nothing I could do to change them. I KNEW I was being ridiculous. Insane. Crazy. Etc. Etc. Trust me, I wanted nothing more than to revert to the normal me.
I can explain this no other way than this. I could not find my normal self. It had been swallowed up by the doom and gloom predictions of a bunch of stupid damn oncology papers I'd foolishly looked up a couple weeks before surgery. 95% of the time I could ignore that and be scarily positive. The rest of the time? Sweet heaven. When you're willingly going for a 2 mile run down the beach for the second day in a row because as long as your legs are aching from the run it distracts your mind from the doom and gloom?
Then you know you're crazy.
And I won't even talk about the drinking. Except to say there was a lot of it. What happens in Rio stays in Rio.
I'll say it again, the entire time I KNEW I was being irrational. I don't know how many of you that actually are reading this have ever had to stare down the cold hard barrels of a gun called cancer (or insert your disease/accident of choice) and accept the fact that you could die. Really accept it. Accept it because you have no choice, the name on the lab results is yours and you can't get it out of it by buying an upgrade to first class or taking a vacation or running off to Spain. The moment you accept that?
Well. Damn. Yeah. THAT.
I don't care who you are - that experience will change you forever. If you haven't looked down that gun barrel yourself, then I'm sorry. You cannot possibly begin to understand what was going through my head since the middle of July. It didn't matter how often I heard it - I KNOW I was being irrational. I KNOW.
I think what I really I needed was someone to say yes. I know you could die. Yes, it totally sucks. I know that is scary as hell, no matter how well prepared you might be for death with the knowledge that heaven is on the other side. I don't believe that is going to happen.
I just needed someone to acknowledge that fear, cry with me over it, and I think I might have been ok.
Guess what? There wasn't a single person I've talked to that did that for me. That didn't give me the standard pat answer - 'oh, you'll be fine. Don't be ridiculous. You're acting crazy. No point in worrying over something you can't change.'
I KNOW/KNEW ALL OF THAT. I'm not an idiot (well, not most of the time).
So what did that mean for me? It meant that everytime I had that small nagging 'but you could die' thought run through my head I had to face it alone. I couldn't have a conversation with anyone because let's face it, who wants to talk about the fact that the person sitting next to you at the dinner table could be dead soon? I prayed a lot in Brazil. I have an app on my kindle that throws random Psalms at me every day. They were my lifeline every morning. They kept me almost sane. But the devil is a wiley fellow, and gets to you when you least expect it. That's why I spent a lot of time running and crying on the beach. Didn't want to, but I didn't have anyone that would listen to what I had to say and work through it with me.
That being said, I cannot tell you how much I appreciated/appreciate the positive support and prayers I've had the amazing grace to receive. It was and continues to be my lifeline. I am a privileged and blessed person and I love you all.
I just really needed someone to acknowledge that I had a right to be scared of what could happen. And noone in my life was able to give me that. Noone. I can't say that I blame anyone for that - hell, I've been giving the same pat, encouraging, positive responses myself. I simply didn't know any better. That maybe someone in my situation needed someone to acknowledge the bad with me.
So that's why I went a little crazy in Brazil. I say again. What happens in Rio, stays in Rio.
Moving on.
I started noticing that I was getting dizzy a couple days before we left Brazil. Light headed. I'd get really confused from time to time and be completely unable to carry on a normal conversation. Ask me a yes or no question and I'd be likely to reply 'the couch has green elephants, so we have to take the metro.'
You know its bad when your travelling companion (reminder: under 25 and male) actually notices and asks if you're ok.
Dang. I thought I'd been hiding it better. So yeah. The thyroid meds likely needed adjustment. Good thing we were going home, I figured. I slept almost the entire flight from Rio to Houston (except for the unfortunate lasagna incident), waking in time for a breakfast croissant and to go through US customs in Houston. We arrived at 530am and our flight to Edmonton didn't leave til 3:19pm so I rented us a car and we went to the space center. I am such a space nerd.
Oh! Side note. I'm an emerald member with National car rental. Basically it means you don't stop at the counter in the airport, you just proceed directly to the emerald aisle at locations where they have emerald aisles. Houston, being a major hub, has an aisle. My young friend, the earl of essex, being under 25, has less experience with car rentals than I. He was weirded out by the way I blithely sailed past the counter. Then sailed into the aisle and said, yeah. Pick anyone you like. He couldn't believe they would all be the same price. (He taught me about hostels, I taught him about car rentals. Seems fitting).
The Earl of Essex picked a Volkswagen Beetle. I drove it long enough to rent it and deliver us to my favorite southern breakfast spot, Cracker Barrel. The Earl had never been to one. I am pleased to say he approved.
Then I let him drive. The least I could do for the earl, since he's a car nerd and all.
Whew. Sidetracked there again. I slept from the restaurant to the space center and again on the flight from Houston to Edmonton later that afternoon. This is not like me at all.
When I got home last Monday night I immediately went to bed, fully intending to go to work the next morning. Except I woke up with a raging case of nausea, debilitating fatigue, a headache that could wake the dead and general malaise. I think I finally got out of bed around 3:45pm. I had to go get the blood drawn for my appointment on Thursday. I knew there was absolutely no way I was safe to drive further than the end of my driveway, and even that wasn't a good idea since there were garage doors involved. I was on the phone with my sister when I looked out my window. My mom was next door! She could take me!
So that was done. Went straight back to bed after the blood letting and slept until late the next morning. I think I might have gone to town for tea, since my kettle had mysteriously relocated to my mom's house next door and I did not have a key to get it back. Other than that, I was a lump in my bed. After 2 days in bed, your body starts to ache. Just saying.
Then it was Thursday morning and the moment of truth.
Right or wrong, it felt a bit like going to an executioner. I truly believed I would get good news. But there was a chance that it wouldn't be good news. I tried not to focus on that, but to be unprepared for bad news would have been a really bad idea too.
Again, I was so tired I could hardly sit in a chair. I micro napped in the waiting room. I micro napped in the exam room. I considered crawling up on the exam table or even the floor for a bit of relief.
FINALLY the dr came in. Have I mentioned I like my surgeon? He's awesome. Always asks after the chickens. Anyway. He had my multi page pathology report in his hand, he sat down next to me and we began to go through it. He started off by saying, well, you're special.
In a good way? I asked.
Yes.
So here's the deal. The large goiter on my neck that originally sent me to the doctor on June 5? A benign follicular adenoma. All lymph nodes completely clear of malignancy. BUT! I had not 1, but 2 kinds of cancer playing games in my thyroid.
The medullary cancer we knew about. It had kindly not spread anywhere but the nodule in which it began. That's the one for which surgery is the only option. They'll do chemo and radiation if it has already spread, but that is generally done for palliative reasons. They got all of this one. Whee!
The papillary cancer was news to us. It was in not one, but 2 different nodules. This is the nice kind of cancer to have in your thyroid. You take radioactive idiodine treatments and it will seek out all the nasty bits of this cancer in your body and destroy them. So very treatable.
So why am I special? Well, these cancers don't typically show up at the same time. They don't work together, as my dr said. I said, huh. That is pretty special. I'd even ride the short bus for that kind of special. He laughed.
I will choose to believe they were fighting each other and that kept them from spreading to other spots. It makes for a better story, no?
So what does it all mean? I have a date with the cancer hospital once they receive my referral. I'll get some bloodwork done. I'll have ultrasounds at regular intervals for quite some time. I'll have to get a radioactive ablation something or other done in 3-4 months to get all the microscopic bits of thyroid that might still reside in me and want to make more cancer.
I'll be glowing. Whee!
My TSH level was really high, so I got a major bump in my synthroid dose. My thyroid meds will likely need adjusting again in 6 weeks. My parathyroid levels were normal. My calcium levels were creepy low again, which explains the numbness, tingling and the shaking and twitching. So I must remember to take the calcium pills every day.
What does it all mean?
That $3000 I spent to get the biopsy done in Vancouver? SAVED MY LIFE.
For I? Am going to live.
Literally and figuratively.
Praise be to God, and AMEN.
