Augmenting My Reality

So to start, the last couple weeks of 2017 I started feeling terrible. My whole body hurts and I was extremely exhausted to the point I could hardly take care of my 2.5 year old daughter. I didn’t have a cold, wasn’t running a fever, didn’t have any sign of being sick. My arms and legs felt heavy all the time and were tender like they were giant bruises.

I decided to schedule an appointment with my primary care physician, since this was super out of character. I mean I have general aches and pains but it just felt off with how lethargic I was. So I went and had blood work done and they ran about 12 or so different different tests.

I got a phone call saying it looked like I have Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disease where your antibodies start to attack your thyroid. Wasn’t completely horrible news, and it explained so much of what was going on with me. So they referred me to an endocrinologist.

It was about a month and a half before the endocrinologist called and scheduled me. He confirmed that it indeed was Hashimoto’s and suggested running some more labs just to make sure my numbers were either the same, maybe better, and I might’ve had a cold that made my CRPs high. They scheduled me for an appointment 6 months out and on I go.

A few days later, once they’ve reviewed my lab results I assume, they call me and tell me they’d like me to come in for an ultrasound on my thyroid the next day. Which, obviously, made me nervous lol. I mean, I went from see you in 6 months to “please come in tomorrow.”

I show up for my ultrasound appointment and he explains that my white blood cells where a little low and I had high CRPs still. So starting the ultrasound and he shows and explains that my thyroid basically looks like Swiss cheese instead of being smooth, which is an indication of Hashimoto’s, further confirming it. Then he shows that I have quite a few enlarged lymph nodes and that they look like they could be malignant. I’m like, wait that means cancerous right? I’m kind of in slight shock but still super calm. He continues to do the ultrasound and measure the lymph nodes that were the largest. I can’t remember the exact size but I think he said the largest was 2-3 cm? I honestly don’t remember all of the details since I was kind of in a daze.

Cancer. I have plenty of family who has gone through different types of cancer and beat it just fine. Then he goes on to say the way that it looks to him as far as my labs and ultrasound go, it is very likely that it could be lymphoma even though that’s very rare. Awesome.

He stated that he was going to talk to an ears nose and throat specialist and refer me there, or possibly to an Oncologist at a cancer center in town. Since the lymph node was pretty big he figured they most likely will end up doing a surgical biopsy instead of a needle biopsy.

He tried to get ahold of my Dr but she was out of town until the following week, she normally would be the one to refer me to other specialists, however he wanted to get the ball rolling right away. Which to me didn’t make any of the situation better, because rushing it just made the idea that I might have cancer so much more real.

The good news, he said, was that lymphoma is very responsive to radiation and chemo therapy. And that if it is only in my thyroid, and hasn’t spread, they would most likely be able to do direct radiation to my thyroid and it could be very effective. Him saying all of this really got me thinking about how real this is, and how at 28 years old I am not ready to deal with cancer.

Is anyone ever ready to deal with cancer. It such a shitty thing! I mean I honestly feel like an asshole saying I’m not ready, there are infants and children dealing with cancer everyday. All in all, fuck cancer.

I will be seeing the ear nose and throat specialist next Tuesday, and also my primary Dr on Wednesday to get her opinion on the whole situation. I haven’t really talked to many people about it, and so I thought that blogging right now seemed like a good way to maybe just vent, or better yet to have an opportunity to be able to talk to people who have been in similar situations. I plan on updating more on here, mostly just for myself and to feel like a little weight has been lifted.