Randomness Etc

Surprisingly, the big mass in the left lobe on the side of my neck is benign. (It's actually larger than a chicken egg, just flattened a bit in one direction. The top is almost up against my jaw and the bottom is concealed behind my collarbone.)

The smaller mass in the isthmus (about the size of a grape) has a 50% chance of being cancerous. And it's not the common type of cancer, it's one of the rarest types that's more aggressive and has a high chance of metastasis. Still has a pretty good survival rate, though.

As for why I may have developed thyroid cancer, they haven't addressed it, but one of the risk factors for the type I might have involves radiation exposure to the head/neck, especially during early childhood. So, great, my old cancer treatment I had as a baby may have given me cancer.

The only way to tell if it's cancer or not is to remove and dissect it. So the plan is to remove the left lobe and isthmus and have a pathologist dissect the suspicious one while I'm still on the operating table. It it's cancer, the surgeon will then remove the rest of my thyroid. If it's benign, they'll let me keep the right lobe and I'll need an annual thyroid ultrasound to make sure nothing else develops.

And while it took over six months to get the ultrasound and biopsy and they honestly didn't seem to know what they were doing in between (ever had a hospital perform a medical test on you, then call you two months later to tell you they can't/don't perform that type of test, then realize their error and, instead of scheduling the procedure recommended by your test results, schedule you for another appointment a month later so the doctor can tell you you need the procedure your results said you should have gotten three months ago?), they scheduled my surgery for less than two weeks after I consulted with the surgeon.