It's Positively Negative

Here's where I attempt to cram the last three days into this one little blog post.
It won't be difficult --

I went into surgery.
Doc was happy with the nodule's appearance so he only took out the left side.
It was negative for cancer!

How's that for short and sweet? ;)

I now carry a scar on my neck, but I carry it as a reminder of God's never wavering lovingkindness. Do you know what? If it had been positive, I am positive it would still remind me of his lovingkindness.

Do you have scars? Scars on any level?  May they serve to remind you that
you have LEARNED
       and you are ALIVE
               and you have PURPOSE.

Jehovah Shammah

I ate an entire bag of corn chips just now. All seven hundred calories of it. I know you'll laugh and syh (that's 'shake your head' in case you didn't know, smh) when I tell you what type of chips they were, but you have to understand that I've been faithfully eating clean for two whole months. Keeping my serving sizes at a serving size. Exercising diligently. Making my yeses mean yes and my nos mean nos. Nose mean nose. No's mean nos. Whatever - you get my drift.

Yep, two entire months. I've gone down 16 pounds by sticking to my guns. It takes nerve and willpower and determination and a gym and healthy food! They say you can't have too much of a good thing, but even Spinach and Kale corn chips aren't meant to be a source of gluttony.

I am totally aware (after the fact) that when I try to drown my emotions in food, I am relying on the power of a full belly to satisfy me, to placate my soul. But food is not the pacifier that any of us need. Especially when we're on a journey to improve health. I've been eating like a bird, sweating like a pig, and I'm finally beginning to look like a fox - and WHAMMO! - along comes a bag of sea salty corn chips and I eat it in its entirety.   Actually, I sort of snuck-ate them. Oh, you know what 'snuck-ate' means. That's when you carry the bag into the room where your husband is not.  I went into the bed, put the bag on the other side of my body (out of sight) and fiddled on the computer while devouring handfuls of the devil. I mean, the corn chips. They were good, but not that good. It was not worth it. And while I thought I was hiding, God was there. Is there. Always. Jehovah Shammah - The Lord is There.

There is FAR greater satisfaction in the knowledge of God and the experience of His peace which He lays upon us like a warm blanket - a comforter.  A comforter!  ...Oh yeah, I like that. He is my Comforter.  (I write this while lying in my bed under a couple of comforters - make that 3 comforters!)

Today, I had a fine needle aspiration performed on one of the lymph nodes in my neck, near the mass in my thyroid. The ultrasound image showed it to be enlarged, so my surgeon wanted to pull some gunk out of it (another good ol' bibopsy) to make sure it was all clear before he went in.  He wants to have a heads-up in case any lymph nodes need to be removed. For one, I've read that papillary carcinoma often spreads to the surrounding lymph nodes. Secondly, my dad is currently in remission from non Hodgkin's lymphoma, so the familial history warranted him to take a looksee.  I am grateful for my thorough doctor!

I'm even more grateful for Jehovah Rapha - The Lord Who Heals!  & may I be constantly reminded of Jehovah Shalom - The Lord is Peace.  He IS the peace that can never be found in any bag of chips.

Now excuse me while I go make myself throw up.  <--- no, no, no - I'm only joking!! ...because that would mean I have to get out of bed. ;)

Out of Control

When Jack Nicholson's character tries to persuade the strong silent Indian to "put it in the basket", we are all hoping that Chief will eventually understand the command and do as he is instructed, but, as you know, the Indian only watches the circus-like antics that unfold on the basketball court.  This best describes how I feel at this moment.  I am Jack, and this #cancer diagnosis has me jumping on anyone's shoulders and yelling for things to happen as I see fit. Yet all the while, the motions of the players are totally out of my control.

Up until this point, I have pretended/imagined to be in firm control of the play-by-plays in my personal life. When young, I wanted to be the best student in any classroom - I graduated valedictorian of my high school class labeled Most Likely to Succeed based on my peers' opinions.  As a young adult, I shifted my major around in college so often that I have quite the well-rounded education! Why? Because I wanted to, and I was in control of even that flighty unorganization. After marrying and having children, I eventually choose to homeschool while my husband worked 70+ hours/week to financially meet our family's needs/wants. Amongst all of these doings, there were certainly aspects that I felt were God's will in my life, so I cannot really take all the credit; but even with God's leading, I was the one who had the final say, by gosh and by golly.  ...Not so with this operation I will be having next week.

The doctors say that the solid slow growing mass in half of my thyroid needs to be surgically removed.  Their opinion is based on the results of a Fine Needle Aspiration of the 2.1 cm nodule in question.  The diagnosis was "suspicious of papillary carcinoma" and while the word 'suspicious' makes me sort of, um, suspicious, I have done my research and have to agree with the docs.

You see, my maternal grandmother had a large goiter removed from her thyroid when she was a young vibrant lady.  Fast forward to her 80s and she had developed a massive tumor in her thyroid which made her unable to even swallow. It was inoperable due to her poor health caused by many insufferable years of Alzheimer's.  That alone is cause for the doctors to be very concerned about any growing masses in my thyroid. Along with that, around 90% of the women on both sides of my family tree live with #hypothyroidism.  I was only recently diagnosed with hypo - only one month ago - just before the fine needle aspiration biopsy (or "bibopsy" as we like to call it around our house - Big Fat Greek Wedding reference ...yeah, we love movies).

I think I should pause for a moment here to kind of explain the thyroid and the process of a diagnosis just a tiny bit to any of you who don't already know.  Your thyroid is just below your adam's apple in your neck. It is shaped sort of like a butterfly and is flitting atop your windpipe.  If you gently press on that area with your fingers while tilting your head up a bit and swallowing, you can actually feel your thyroid. It's just one little bitty organ but it sure packs a wallop if it's disturbed in any way!  It's a hormonal organ that controls mood swings, sensitivity to cold weather, energy level (metabolism), how well you sleep, depression, anxiety, and on and on and on with all the things most people would liken to PMS! Except it's not only at PM time - it's ALL the time. Often enough to make Roseanne Barr's depiction of PMS a cakewalk. Most everyone has nodules (or little bumps) in their thyroid and 98% of people with nodules never have to worry about these cysts.  They are extremely common.  The other 2% should have them removed due to genetics/family history of thyroid cancer, an unsightly bulge, or a diagnosis of cancer.  Just because we could feel the mass on my thyroid did not put me in the 2%, and neither did the history of my Grandma's tumor. That categorization only came after they did the bibopsy ;)  ~ After numbing the area on my neck, a doctor stuck a long thin needle into the mass to scrape and suck up (aspirate) some of the contents for pathological viewing.  When the pathologist studies the cells on a slide, he then determines if it's benign (good!), malignant (cancerous, ugh!), suspicious for malignancy (cells do not look normal so we conclude they're abnormal), or undeterminable (meaning they should do it again for a clearer view of the cells).  It's as simple as that.

I have suspicious cells and we have decided to remove my entire thyroid and not just the massy left half. A total thyroidectomy. Why? Because if only the left side is removed, and the pathology results come back as a definite form of cancer, they would have to operate again - in the same cut and site - to remove the other half. I don't know about you, but I just don't want to take the chance of them having to go into my neck twice within a couple of weeks' time.  Makes me shiver just thinking about it.  And by taking out only half (hemithyroidectomy), I would still be obliged to take hormone medication for the rest of my life, so let's just yank it all out and not worry about it anymore, alright?  Alright.

It's only after my thyroid is removed that the doctors will know for certain IF it is cancer. And I have absolutely no control over that outcome.  Still, my faith is strong, and I know that God's got this.

This waiting is the hardest part.

Welcome!

I know, I know...  Such an alluring title to a blog, right?  I'm ever so glad it reeled you in. Happy to see you!

This title wasn't difficult to come up with, actually. I was, as usual, in my thinking spot (my bed) cozied up with four pillows of different composition (one is fluffy with feathers, two are king size and as plush and mushy as twinkies, and one has that blue gel thingy in it that is meant to keep you cool but only makes me think of the cancerous toxins that might be seeping into my brain if I slept on it. ...So I just let my husband sleep on it. Lol!)

So anyway, I was thinking, thinking, thinking. Waaaay too many thoughts.  Genres of thoughts. Genres and subgenres and little baby subgenres.  Come on, you know you do it, too ~ We love to chase those rabbits, bay-bee! It's not all that fun to run in forty different directions in your mind, and it's definitely preventing my good friend Sleep from paying a visit. I realized that we're all sort of in our own little insane-asylums of our own makings. In the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, each character has his own set of rabbits to chase. We all have our own cuckoo ways.

You know, they say that if you journal, you can have closure. You can tame the rabbits. My rabbit-y thinks have been leading me to blog for a couple of years now. I even made a couple of puny attempts; however, the outcomes were embarrassing, so I made u-turns and eternally vanquished both sites from the internet. Who's to say that I won't do the same to this one? I may. But I may not. Because I'm hoping this one will be different.

I will try ever so hard to allow this to be my thinker-out-louder blog.

See, it's when I worried too much about what others would think about my blog that I would make myself disgusted with the fakiness of my words (yep, I made that word up -See how un-fake I can be?); when I used a thesaurus to fancy up the blog; when I searched for an hour for a perfect flickr photo to add to my post; when I got so poetically gushy that I didn't even recognize the writer of my words - That's when I would say, "OH forget it" and click delete.

So this time, I'm for real. I'm like, Velveteen Rabbit real.

This time, I have some rabbits that must be caught.
Because I've been so tired for a long time now. Do you remember the one character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that was always tired? Always always so tired?

Well, I'm tired.

& I've recently been diagnosed with "suspicion for papillary carcinoma of the thyroid."

So if you'd like to run around with me on this rabbit trail and some others, please please please let me know that you're here with me!  No matter your ailment, your hang-up, your oddity, your sin, your sickness, your personality - no matter how cuckoo you may be! - You are not alone.  And neither am I.