Let me first say, THIS IS NOT A FUNDRAISER story, I have good insurance (Medicare Advantage) with Kaiser Permanente and the most I will pay is my yearly Out of Pocket (which is currently about $4,300.00) so I’m good on the monetary front, and if Kaiser wants me to pay it all up front, I’ve got about 8 weeks to set up a HELOC on my already paid for house to cover the co-pay fee prior to surgery. For which I am grateful. I can’t imagine having to face this without insurance or with insurance that requires you to pay a full 20% of fee for the whole surgery (Plain Jane Medicare).
But I will be having general anesthetic for the surgery, and I’ve already signed that form for that SIX times (emergency C-Section delivery 1987; cholecystectomy after burst gallbladder in 1988 leaving me with a 10” scar from them opening me up and digging around for loose gallstones; burst Fallopian tube 1988; 2nd C-Section delivery 1989; heart attack and stent procedure 2011) and each time my odds of a bad income increase. Things like a permanent vegetative state, or brain damage are part of the possible outcomes just from the anesthesia, that doesn’t include other risks from surgery, especially when you have multiple, chronic medical conditions (cardiac disease, type II Diabetes Mellitus and obesity).
So I’m a bit trepidatious about that part of the whole thing.
But the surgeon? She is making me feel a lot better about things.
She is young, at first I thought “oh my god, she looks 17!”, but she is probably more like 28 years old (I didn’t ask her age I was focused on our conversation). Which makes me confident that she has recent medical training and a lot of surgeries during her residency, up on all of the latest in procedures and outcomes for her field of work (Head and Neck Surgeon). Plus, she was all for my choice to remove the entire thyroid and not just the Hot Toxic Node which is cancerous. I figured, if I elect for the Lobectomy I’ll have to take some Levothyroxine as HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and if I have her take the entire gland out, it just means more of that; so I asked her about it and she said, ‘yes’, so we are going for the Full Monty and removing the entire gland. Which will preclude a future surgery to remove the rest of it, if at some future date it turned out to have any cancerous cells in that lobe.
Surprisingly, it is a day surgery and so long as the superior laryngeal nerve on both sides of my throat don’t get stunned (temporarily) I’ll go home that day. If one or both of them are affected, it could be a risk to breathing, and they’ll keep me overnight for observation, but the surgeon says that situation has never occurred during any of her procedures (both sides). She also strongly reinforced the idea that the nerve issue is temporary, so as not to give me nightmares about long term inability to breath without a vent!
Also surprising is that there are no chemotherapy or radiation treatments for this type of cancer. Once the surgery is complete, a few weeks later I will get a dose of irradiated iodine. Because the only thing in the human body which will absorb that irradiated iodine is thyroid cells, if any cancerous thyroid cells have metastasized and moved about my body, that iodine will be absorbed by them and it will KILL them. During the 3 to 5 days following that irradiated iodine procedure I have to send my adult daughter who lives with me, and the five cats in the house somewhere to stay OR I’ll have to go somewhere where no one will share a bathroom with me. The irradiated iodine will flush out of my system over those few days, but it could affect my daughter and those cats (who love to lay on the bath mat outside the shower and do on occasion go in there an lick up water off the shower floor).
I will have regular scans for a few years to ensure that nothing is growing back in the area of the removed thyroid gland, but that is the full treatment plan.
So over the next few months, I may not spend a lot of time talking about politics, even though this is shaping up to be the most contentious and possibly nation-ending election in any of our lifetimes.
Because I’m a bit obsessed now with reading about thyroid cancers and outcomes, because even though there was only a 5% chance that my Hot Toxic Node (first found in 2019) on my thyroid could become cancerous, it did.
There is one thing that does worry me, and which is and should be seen as superfluous, is the risk to my voice. Those nerves that could be damaged, temporarily? That is not all that can happen…
https://gs.amegroups.org/article/view/15669/html The external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve (EBSLN) is at risk of injury during thyroid operations when dissection of the superior pole and ligation of the superior thyroid vessels (STV) are carried out. The rates of injury to this nerve are highly variable in the literature, but can be as high as 58% (1). The EBSLN is the sole motor nerve to the cricothyroid muscle (CTM) and its dysfunction results in lowered voice fundamental frequency, lowered voice projection, fatigue and inability to achieve high-frequency sounds.
Although the contribution of EBSLN to the myriad of vocal changes that may follow thyroid surgery is unclear, it is felt that singers and those who make professional use of the voice, such as lawyers, teachers and broadcasters, are more significantly affected by the subtle changes related to its injury. On the other hand, the perception of an abnormal voice impairs the quality of life and decreases the general health in many ways (2) and affected patients may be unable to shout for help, for example. From that perspective, EBSLN injury poses a threat to handicap all patients undergoing thyroid operations.
I love music and have been singing since I was a child, and taught myself to play acoustic guitar when my late father gave me one as a birthday gift for my 25th birthday. I’ve written some songs and I’d love to have one of them in particular (Mama’s Eyes) recorded some day.
But if sounding a bit ‘gravelly’ (as the surgeon put it) is a result of cutting out my cancerous thyroid gland and leaving me healthy with more life in front of me? So be it.
Fuck Cancer.
So all of the rest of you have to take up my share of agitating for a better future this spring, get out there and register voters where you live and make sure every single person you know is registered to vote and will be voting for the Democrats on their ballots this year. Have those hard conversations with close friends and family who don’t vote or who hate/loathe politics, and get them to promise to vote this year, because it matters so much to YOU. Make it personal.
Because I’m not letting this cancer kill me, and you guys all need to help ensure Joe Biden wins this election so that the odious and disgusting Donald Trump doesn’t get another chance to kill our little experiment in democracy on November 5th.
UPDATE:
I’m off to spend some time with family for a few hours. I will check back in after.
THANK you, to all of you who have sent me well wishes, they are very much appreciated.
- angie