Are you drunk?

It's the end of post op day two, and I am struggling trying to type this blog. My muscles keep cramping up on me. My face is numb and tingly and my eyes are constantly twitching. I have been taking massive amounts of calcium in the form of tums ultra which are 1000mg a piece I think I've taken 8000mg today. I still have some of my parathyroids, hopefully they are just in shock and will start working soon.

I ventured out today, out to Walmart in my sweats so I should have fit right in lol. Still I felt like everyone was looking at me. Probably thinking I got my neck slashed or something but, hey I'm a warrior, I'm a cancer survivor! I will wear it proud and will never be shy to talk about it or the story behind it.

Well I'm getting pretty tired and my hand is cramping so I'm getting off of here!

I didn't die!!!

Good morning!! It's post op day número uno, and I am alive! Surgery day is behind me and the rest of my life is in front of me and for that I am thankful! I feel as if a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Ahh I can breathe. I was surprising calm the whole time waiting to go into surgery. I think the worst part was getting my IV put in which was done by the anesthesiologist so one time bam! it was in, but now I want it out.

I bet I waited about an hour in the pre op holding area as we will call it on my stretcher by myself while my family waited in their separate holding area, anxiously watching a board with a number that  corresponded to my name to let them know where I was at. Finally after what seemed like forever, someone from my surgery team finally came to wheel me back. He slipped something in my IV to make me feel "relaxed" although I'm beginning to wonder if it was just a placebo because I didn't feel relaxed. A short trip later we arrived into the creepy operating room. Aren't all operating rooms creepy? Ice cold and usually mint green for some reason. They transferred me over to the operating table put a mask over my face and told me to breathe deeply, then told me to breathe deeper because I wasn't breathing deep enough lol and that's the last thing I remember.

The next thing I remember was ripping off the oxygen mask and saying I didn't die! Because remind you I really thought I might die during this operation. I'm so giddy I'm alive. Then the next thing I remember is being so stinking hot, the nurse must have noticed I was roasting because she asked if I wanted my socks off and started pulling all but one of the 87 blankets off of me.
Now I've never gone under general anesthesia before and it can make some people nauseated, well I guess I'm one of them, so bring on the zofran then the pain meds they gave me made me even more sick to my stomach so I needed more anti nausea medication. I ended up staying like 3 hours in recovery. This whole time my family is still waiting to see me, finally at 2:30 I get to go to my room in a much more comfortable bed and get to see everyone. Relief for them, I just want to go back to sleep.

I've had two roommates so far. Damn you semi-private rooms! My current roommate had her thyroid removed and had a tiny little I would say maybe not even 2 inch incision. I have a good 5 inch incision across my neck. It serious looks like I've had my neck slashed open. All in all though I'm very lucky, my left lobe was a little bigger than they thought. 8cm they said. They had to cut out some muscle along with it because I guess it started to attach to the muscle and they removed at least one suspicious lymph node that I know of. My husband was scared to death. I'm damn lucky they caught when they did. Who know what would of happened if it would have never been detected. Crazy shit I tell you.

Last night I started to get numb and tingly in my face and feet which means my calcium is low, so the cure for that is tums ultra. See they were able to leave some if not all of my parathyroid but they could be bruised or damaged right now and they need to heal, hopefully they will heal. Your parathyroid controll your calcium and vitamin D, but the tums helped last night.

I didn't get any sleep. Between my roommate and I getting labs and our vitals or meds there was no sleep to be had here. Jimmy was not allowed to stay with me so he is out there somewhere in the city of Pittsburgh right now. Plan for today is to be discharged on synthroid and tums! I can't drive until I get full range of motion back in my neck. I see my surgeon in a week so we can discuss seeing an endo and how my surgery went and if and when I will need radiation. I'm going get off of here to try to order to grub since I can actually eat. Rember cancer is not a death sentence!

It's D-day!

It's D-day, the day is finally upon us. I am in the surgical pre op area waiting to be called back. I checked in, we are in the family lounge area which is packed with all the other patient and families. I'm hungry lol. So now we are just waiting.... I'm so nervous... I hate IVs I'm scared to be put under. I just hope it all goes well. Hopefully this will not be my last post! I will post post op! Love yas!!!

'twas the night before...

'twas the night before D-day and all was quiet. My children were gone, already dropped off at my husband's cousin's house. It took everything in me to keep it together when I dropped them off. I balled my eyes out as I packed their little bags thinking we might never see each again. I'm starting to tear up as we speak now. My children 2 and almost 4 as of next month, know mommy is going to the hospital tomorrow to get her boo-boo removed by surgery, but still  quite oblivious to the scale of the situation. They just know they are having a sleep over with their cousins. My youngest is a bit clingy so I did end up having to sneak out which broke my heart in a million pieces.

Surgery was originally scheduled for 10:40 am but was changed to 9:10am. I have to be there 2 hours prior which means I must check in at 7:10am. We are leaving around 5:30, no one wants to fight Pittsburgh rush hour traffic. 

I have never had a surgery before where I have been put to sleep so I am fucking scared out of my mind! I'm scared of dying on the operating table basically. I hate getting IVs so I'm not looking forward to that either, and since I'm having surgery I have to shave my legs lol. I don't want to be wondering around in a hospital gown with some hairy man-beast legs lol  on the bright side of things at least I should be able to eat some lunch since my surgery was moved up an hour and a half! Optimism... Optimism...

I doubt I will get any sleep tonight with my anxiety level being at 100. So how did I find out I had thyroid cancer? Good question, funny story.

I was at work one day, it was thanksgiving day actually. I work at a hospital and one of our doctors was in to see her patients and she was sitting at the nurses station putting in orders. It must have just been how I turned my head that she noticed my neck was swollen. She said to me "you need an ultrasound of your thyroid you have a goiter." Now this totally struck me off guard and I wasn't sure how to react to that, he'll she's the doctor not me. My only reply was "well I had my values checked over the summer and everything was normal." "I don't care." She said "you need to have an ultrasound, I'm sorry I'm a doctor." And she left the floor. "We'll that was rude." One of the nurses said. I didn't think it was rude. To me, it was ominous, because that conversation replayed itself over and over in my head every day. I googled goiter and looked up all the possibilities and everything from graves to hashis, to cancer to hypo and hyperthyroidism came up. Finally like a month later I went to my pop for a uti and mentioned to her what this doctor said. And she had said "yea your neck does look a little swollen" I said " hey fat people have fat necks how was I ever supposed to see this. I gained like 50lbs with my first pregnancy and still needed to loose 25 of it so nothing looked abnormal to me. Anyways my pop ordered the ultrasound and sur enough there it was a big ol goiter on my left side, about twice the size of my right lobe which is perfectly normal. I have no symptoms, it doesn't affect my breathing, swallowing, or changed my voiced, it doesn't give me a cough that doesn't want to go away. I said it cohabitated with me so well I would have never known! So anyways my pop referred me to an ENT who wanted to "investigate" my goiter further which was my biggest fear at the time. Silly me. I though oh just put me on some synthroid and call it a day. Ha! He ordered a bunch of bloodwork and then.... an FNA or a fine needle aspiration... which is a biopsy of your thyroid with a thin needle where they just use local anesthesia and ultrasound to help guid the needle in your thyroid to aspirated enough cells so they can tell if you have cancer or not and they have to put the needle in multiple times. In my case they have to poke me 4 times to get enough cells for a sample. Then a few days later the results came back as papillary thyroid carcinoma and that's how we got where we are today. Crazy huh?

I wanted to upload a pre surgery pic of my and my neck but my phone won't let me for some reason, maybe I will figure it out and do and pre and post surgery comparison.

The countdown to D-day begins!

I'm tired so this will be a short post as long as I don't ramble.

So it's Sunday, two days before the big day, D-day as I shall refer to it. It was a pretty uneventful day. I went to church, helped my pregnant sister move (well watch my husband help my pregnant sister move), then went down to my dad's to eat dinner and spend some time with him before he leaves town for the next week. I'm trying to hit up as many family members and friends this weekend as possible, ya know just in case.

Anyways while I was a church someone slipped me a note when they were passing around the little donation plates. For moment I felt like I was in school again lol, this note was from a fellow church member who a few years ago had battled thyroid cancer herself, the same kind I have. She went through two surgeries and chose against everyone's advice and opted to not do radiation. I know many people who have come forward to tell me about some disease they have with their thyroid mostly graves, some hypo, but this is the first I have met, besides the woman who trained me that had cancer. Which leads me to my next thought. Why are so many of us diagnosed with some type of thyroid disease? Is it higher in this area? Does it have to do with the fly ash from little blue? Or does it have anything to do with the power plants? Someone needs to call Erin Brockavich! It makes me worry for the health of my children.

Well I'm exhausted and I really need to clean my house because I refuse to come home to a dirty house after surgery. I will post tomorrow as I will be very anxious waiting for surgery. Goodnight!

The longest day and post of my life ( so far)

Well it's Saturday night and I figured I should talk about how my first encounter with the infamous UPMC went. We got up there at 8:30. God only knows why my husband and father in law decided that I needed to be up there that early. Remember from my previous post my appointment was for 10:30 but the surgeon wanted me to be there an hour early so I could have a repeat ultrasound performed before I saw her. Now as we all know, appointments are never on time. Funny thing is the doctor can be an hour late and that is just fine, but if you are more than 15 minutes late you must reschedule and expect to receive a bill for the visit anyways.

So we get there at 8:30 and wait.... And wait. And I think around 9:50 they finally call me back for my ultrasound which took about 15 minutes. They told me they were specifically looking for my lymph nodes because the u/s I had done at city either did not include my lymph nodes or forgot to mention them, so we must look for the lymph nodes. When the doctor was done he mentioned what a difficult exam it was due to the size of my thyroid which was a little discouraging. Then we were sent back out to the waiting to wait some more.

Finally at about 11:40 doctor Carty's nurse finally called me back! Praise Jesus! It was finally MY turn. Lets get this show on the road, I am so ready. They brought me back to a tiny exam room where there was no seating for anyone. In this room was myself, my husband, my FIL, and the RN. She does all the basics, weight, height, BP, temp blah blah blah. Then she asks how I found out about my cancer. Which is always an interesting story. Have we discussed that? If not I will get to that later, anyways after the nurse leaves in comes dr Carty's NP and like I said there's no room/ no seating in this exam room so she is sitting on the sharps container across from me. Examines my neck and starts to tell me stuff I already know you need to have your thyroid removed. Yes I know. And she said usually its a 2 to 3in incision across your neck but in my case it might or probably will be a little bigger. Bummer. Then she said I will need radiation after which usually starts 4 to 6 weeks after surgery. Then she asked when I would like to have surgery. I said as soon as possible, I mean who would want to put something like this off. I just want to get this past me and start with my new life because right now I am scared shitless! Basically this NP did all of Dr Carty's dirty work. Then dr Carty finally came in. The first thing she said was "what can I do for you today" and I replied "well I have thyroid cancer and I would like it removed" straight to the point that's how I operate lol to make a long story short she examined me I gave her my history blah blah blah. Now when we got to the part about my MTHFR mutation that almost put a complete stop to my surgery altogether. I was like damnit! Why must I have so much shit wrong with me. The MTHFR as far as I knew only affected me during pregnancy and I only had to be put on aspirin and folic acid. Thank goodness I'm not one of those that has to give themselves heparin injections. So dr Carty was like I need to see this from your OB or you need to see a hematologist and this is going to push the surgery back another week, and I'm just like ok. In the mean time let's do some pre op testing. Yes! Poked and prodded. Now mind you I'm in the 3rd floor of the Faulk building. They are now sending me over to the 5th floor of the Montiefure sp? Building for bloodwork, and to see an anesthesiologist for clearance. Then while I'm doing that I get a phone call they want me to have a cat scan of my neck, well I have to go to the 1st floor of the Presbyterian building. Now mind you these buildings are all about a block or so away from each other.... a Pittsburgh block! Lol

By the time we leave the hospital it's like 4pm. Still no records from my ob, damn them! I'm whooped, I'm hungry, I need a glass of wine. Pit stop at the Olive Garden if I don't mind. Until the next day.
The next morning UPMC calls me to tell me my ct was go and dr Carty will see me in the OR as long as we get the labs from my OB. Well it's time we me to light a fire under their asses now isn't it? And that's exactly what I said to the woman on the phone at UPMC. Lol so I called out to my ob and said I need my medical records faxed to this dr, I need surgery. Oh your records are at our other office. I called their other office and tell them the same thing . Here they were trying to send labs dr Carty already had that just pertained to my thyroid. I said no they want to know about m MTHFR mutation, oh well Nikki doesn't have anything like that in your chart. The hell if she doesn't , she is the one who ordered this test back in 2008. Oh they want the records from back that far she said. Well yes I said.  She was like well I will see what I can find. Frustrated I knew she wasn't going to be any help. I got off the phone with her and called my high risk ob's office and asked if they still had my records. I told them I had cancer and I need surgery but the surgeon would not operate on me until they got these certain records. Now I knew they could not fax it the surgeon but they could fax it to my ob who could fax it to my surgeon. Well about an hour later I got a call from dr Carty's off she got the paperwork. Finally!!! Surgery is a go for this Tuesday. So my plan must have worked, but dr Carty still wants me to see a hematologist inApril. Even though my mutation is not going to affect my thyroid surgery, better to be safe than sorry I guess. Maybe I will learn something. Who knows. Now we just wait for surgery. More waiting.....

My first encounter with UPMC

Here we go.... I am on my way to UPMC... YaY!!!! Not! Stopping by to grab some grub right now. I slept like crap last night, the baby was up and down all night and I had to listen to the constant drip of water running in my kitchen faucet to ensure our pipes would not freeze again last night. So here I am all groggy and certainly not bright eyed and bushy tailed riding in the back seat of my own vehicle as I get taxied to my first appointment with the surgeon. If I haven't told you before I'm telling you now, I'm meeting with the chief surgeon of endocrinology, Dr. Sally Carty. I've read she has horrible bed side but is very good at what she does and in the end that's all that matters. I must admit, I haven't been really nervous up to this point but I'm sure once I walk in to the hospital I will start to have a mini panic attack. We are already starting to hit rush hour traffic, just great! Anxiety level just went up a notch haha It's 7:45 and we just past the DVE building. I have to be there at 9:30 to get an ultrasound done (I'm sure to check for any growth) before I see the doctor at 10:30. Hopefully we make it there on time. I hate being a worrier by nature.

Blogger Virgin

So.... I actually decided to write a blog, how exciting! Well I guess we will see. I really decided to write a blog after being diagnosed with cancer. Some of this is raw, some of this is funny, but all of this is me in my most vonerable time.

I'm 27 years old and I have cancer and even though I have known for almost a week that statement still leaves me numb.

I've cried it out, I've got mad at my thyroid who is a traitor, my arch enemy. I've got mad at God for putting this path before me, because it's not fair. How is this fair? At one point in time I thought I should have been aborted as a fetus because I am just too genetically malformed between the MTHFR, the Celiacs, and now this.

Back to the cancer, who gets cancer at 27? I don't have time to be sick or die. I have 2 little girls who need their mom around. I have a family who needs me. I have a who life to live. I know that the outcome of this cancer is fantastic but honestly I don't know how long I've had this and I am scared that they will tell me that it has spread to somewhere else. I know that's extremely rare but it's still a very real fear of mine, and I'm not ready to leave my kids. Speaking of which my oldest who will be 4 next month knows something is up. She will never leave my side now :( the past few nights have been awful trying to get her to go to sleep in her room. She crawls up on me like a cat to sleep and she will throw a fit if you try to move her so yea she knows something is up which breaks my heart.

I'm scared to death because I don't know what's ahead of me. The dr said that since I have papillary thyroid cancer with the proper treatment I should be cured. Keeping fingers crossed and a positive mindset. I go on the 21st of this month to UPMC to meet with the chief of endocrinology surgery. I know I will need my thyroid removed and then radiation after. Oh and I am 122 hours short of qualifying for FMLA. Bullshit!!! So LOA for me. I don't know how often I will write in this maybe when I am feeling down or anxious, maybe for updates. We shall see....

I will talk to you all later
Ali