The Big C Word

Back in October I decided that I better make an appointment with my doctor before I got married. That is pretty normal, most girls do make a point to go see their OB-GYN before they get married. I had not been in probably four years. I absolutely hate going (I mean who doesn't) and I wasn't taking any birth control and therefore felt I had no real reason to go. Well, one month away from being married and we were not ready to come home from our honeymoon preggers so I needed to get back on birth control. I wanted to go for a few reasons. One, was to have my exam, one was for birth control and the last reason was to see if there was any way of knowing if I would have a hard time getting pregnant. Although we don't want to get pregnant right away we definitely don't want to wait too long to have children. Frankie will be 40 this year and I will be 29 so we don't want to wait too long. My parents had a hard time getting pregnant with my sister so I just wanted to double check everything.

I went and we talked about all kinds of things. I even talked with her about my weight problems. I had gained weight and then when I met Frankie I gained more weight. oops :) I just kinda chalked it up to being my happy weight. However, when we got engaged in June I, like most future brides, started to focus on losing weight. I wanted to look wonderful and skinny and tone in my dress. I went to the gym every day, I started watching what I was eating and started eating a lot of salads. Nothing happened. I didn't lose a single pound. We talked about all of this and she asked if I was sensitive to temperatures hot or cold and yes, in fact I was never just normal. I was either bone chilling cold or heat flashing, sweating bullets hot. While we were talking she was checking my neck, lymph nodes, throat - you know - what your doctors normally do when you see them. This time though she asked me to swallow. I did, no problem. She asked if I ever had any problems swallowing or feeling like something was in my throat. No, I didn't have any problems with that. Did I have any pain in my throat or neck? Nope, not that either. Well, she decided that she wanted to do some blood work to check out my hormones and thyroid levels. She also wanted me to go and get an ultrasound done on my thyroid. Of course I was a little thrown by all of that but she didn't seem too concerned so I figured I wasn't going to be either.

About a week later I got a call with the results. But, they didn't tell me the results over the phone they said I needed to come back in. Dun Dun Dun.... Talk about your stomach dropping. Why in the world did I have to go in, what was so wrong that they couldn't tell me over the phone. I of course went that day and my doctor, who is wonderful by the way, told me that my thyroid levels looked fine as far as the blood work went but that my hormones were all over the place. She informed me that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, PCOS and that the PCSO was most likely the reason that I had gained weight and more importantly why I was having such a hard time losing it. More on PCOS in a later post though. Well, with that news out of the way she dove right in to the results of my ultrasound. I had a nodule on my thyroid. Talk about quit listening! In my mind I was going, a nodule, a nodule - wait - do you mean a lump! I have a lump in my body?!, She was wonderful and calm and kept saying don't freak out, it's most likely nothing, these things are common blah blah blah blah blah.... I had a lump with a fancy name for it  - a nodule on my thyroid. She was sending me to an endocrinologist.

Sooo... in November, fresh off my honeymoon I finally got to go see my endocrinologist. I was very impressed with him. For one, he took time to talk to me and my mom and another, he made sure I got my biopsy done that day. I was not prepared for that but that is probably a good thing. It was the day before Thanksgiving and they were short staffed and he still made sure that they got my biopsy out of the way.

Fast forward to about a month later and I finally got the results. They of course called me a couple of weeks after the biopsy to say that they sent it to another lab for further testing and to please be patient that they would have the results as soon as possible. So, in December I heard from my doctor. My biopsy was ruled a follicular neoplasm. Which is a fancy way of saying that they couldn't tell. Apparently the only way to tell was to remove it. So, once again I got transferred to another doctor, this time a surgeon. A highly recommended surgeon by the way, Dr. J ( that's what I'll refer to my endocrinologist as) just went on and on about Dr. T (my surgeon) and how wonderful he was and how lucky we were to have him in Georgia. But, one thing Dr. J did make sure of was that I would not freak out about this result. There was still an 80% chance that everything was fine and please please please do not think you have cancer or worry about it at all. And honestly, I can say that I really didn't worry about it. I had just gotten married. I was so happy and in love and bottom line, what could I really do about it? There was no point in freaking out until I knew I had something to freak out about.

....This post is crazy long so I will post part 2 tomorrow.... :)