So here we are again. I got out of isolation yesterday. YAY! I was so glad to be among the social again, one of the first things I did was go to Walmart. I surprised my children by picking them up from daycare, and they were very surprised. My youngest nearly torn down a baby gate to get to me.
Moving on to today, which is the real reason for this post. I had my post treatment body scan today. My husband said "why are you getting another scan if you just had one?", and at first I didn't understand either but then they explained that with the higher dose of RAI in my body the scan would be more sensitive and if there was anything in my body it was likely to be picked up on this scan. This time I once again emptied my bladder, but unlike last time, this time they made me drink a glass of water then I got on the table. This nuclear med machine looked slightly different which made me curious as to whether this test would be any different from the last, so naturally I asked questions. The tech told me this particular test would take about 20 minutes and my doctor should have the results by the end of the day and it would be up to his discretion as to when he would contact me with those results..... Well it didn't happen like that at all. This test took 35 to 40 minutes. I hate these scans. You have to lay completely still, and even though you are all strapped down your body still has the urge to move. I swear my arms and legs went numb and I felt just a head and a torso on the table. Finally when my scan was done we were escorted to a patient consult room and waited for almost fifteen minutes before anyone came in to talk to us, and that was after my husband over heard the techs talking about me doing another scan. All of this sent me into an anxiety attack, to be frank the thought of it sends me into an anxiety attack right now. I knew right then and there they found something new.
So finally someone came in and vaguely explained that they spotted something on the scan but they are not sure what it is soft tissue, a lymph node maybe, but they would like me to do another scan and before they left I asked them where was this new finding and they said the chest. I immediately burst into tears after the tech left. This is not what I wanted to hear today, I just wanted to get a scan and be on my merry way. The last thing I wanted to hear was about my cancer metastasizing. Shortly thereafter the radiologist comes in after scrolling threw the images and said there was some uptake in the mediastinal area and they were not sure if it was my thymus or a lymph node or what, but the good news is, no cancer in my bones or lungs! There's gotta be a silver lining somewhere right? The radiologist suggest with the permission from my endocrinologist I have what is a spect cat scan done. It is a nuclear med cat scan that will pick up the RAI and will pin point the exact location of this uptake. I already have the RAI in my system so lets do it. I just have to wait fourty-five minutes for the machine to be free and to hopefully get an order from my doctor for the test. Make a long story short we get the order like fifteen minutes before the machine is free, ironically it's the same machine I had my earlier test on. No wonder it looked different! It is also a cat scan. So this test the nuclear med camera slowly circled around me stopping every couple of inches to take pictures, focusing on my chest. This took all of thirty minutes. Then I was put directly into the cat scan which took another fifteen minutes. Then we sit in the hallway and wait for the results of the test. For some reason it took a long time to load the images of the ct scan but once those were loaded the radiologist came out and talked to us almost immediately. The spread of cancer was located in my thymus, which he said was not uncommon in younger patients, and good news it wasn't a lymph node so no surgery. Since I already had the RAI, I am already being treated for it so now it's just monitoring me to make sure my thyroglobulin goes down and hopefully stays down. Blood work every four weeks for a year. Of course yearly scans. I'm done with Pittsburgh for a month, when I go back up for my 3 month follow up with my surgeon, then it's not back until September for a neck ultrasound, that is unless my doctor would like to follow me more closely for some reason. I've learned to expect the unexpected. So this day has completely drained me. On that note good night!
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