Cancer Sucks- Part One-Round One

NOTE:  When I say that Cancer "sucks", its not that I am saying that other things don't "suck" just as badly, or even much worse.  We all get our bag of troubles in our lives, and yours could very well be MUCH harder to deal with than mine.  This is just an anniversary for me, and a time to reflect.

When I was a kid, you didn't say the word "Suck" in my family.  It was a BAD WORD.  I still don't really like the word much, although (sorry Lyn) I do say it on occasion. 

Cancer sucks.  It really does.  I sometimes (shockingly) even call it- ready for this?- "Damn Cancer".   I know, you can't believe I said that.  You'll never look at my blog again. Get over it.


I watched my mother died of Cancer (colon), when I was five (see my post That First Pivotal Event).  I watched my sister almost die from it twice.  I grew up hating Cancer, but always thinking that it wasn't "my thing".  I had other trials.  Cancer wasn't going to be my problem.


But alas, I was wrong.  

Jacob at preschool graduation. 

The good news, HOORAY!!!!!!!!,  is that as of right about now I am a FIVE YEAR SURVIVOR of the dreaded stuff.  Go me.  I remember that I set off, with hair barely there, on a celebratory trip to Disney World with Spencer, my older kids and then-infant son Jacob five years ago today.  The same Jacob who graduated from preschool this week. Wow.  It seems like a long time ago.  So much has happened since.  


Cancer, real or imagined, is still a part of my life.  It seems like about every six months or so I have some kind of "scare" requiring testing and agonized waiting.  Thankfully, to this point, all of these scares have turned out to be just minor problems, or nothing at all.  


That wasn't the case five-and-a-half years ago, or fourteen years ago.  Those times, the scares weren't just scares. They were "IT".  The big "C".  The one that sucks.


ROUND ONE:  Fourteen years ago (wow).

Fourteen years ago I was a 30-something mom of young children. It was December, and I had a sore throat that wouldn't go away.  At the time, Spencer, Erin, Mikell and I were all performing in the Mountain West Ballet production of The Nutcracker. We did it for three years- one of those years we made Garrett be in it, too, as a party boy. 


I decided to go to the doctor for the sore throat.  He told me that it was just a virus and nothing to worry about, but while I was there he felt a lump in my neck that he thought I should get checked out.  It turned out that I had a walnut sized benign lump on my thyroid, but that within that walnut there was a pea-sized malignant growth.  


I remember standing in my laundry room with the door closed so no one could hear or see me, crying.  Thinking that this couldn't possibly be happening to me, that Cancer wasn't my "thing".  


During this round, though, I never thought that I might die.  My doctor told me "If you're going to get Cancer, this is the kind you want".  The survival rate for Thyroid Cancer is very high.


I had my thyroid out just before Christmas.  Everyone was very sweet and supportive. They babied me and brought meals.   I had to go for six weeks without any replacement hormone after the surgery, which was hard.  I was teaching at the time, and told my students what was going on.  I think that its good for people to know that other people are going through "stuff".  They were great.  I taught mostly from my desk because I grew increasingly tired.   I have a chair that we got secondhand that I painted, Mary Engelbreit style, during the last week when I was so tired that it was all I could do to sit up and paint for a while, then lean back on our couch and rest.  The chair still sits in my living room, I just can't seem to get rid of it.

My Cancer chair

After the six weeks, I went in to the hospital for a few days and got big-time radioactive. I was given radioactive iodine treatment by nurses who wore haz-mat-style suits.  Seriously.  It was like something from a science fiction movie.  When I went to the bathroom I was told to flush it six times, to get all of the radioactivity out of the bowl.  Being in the hospital was kind of a nice break.  I read and watched lots of DVDs that I wanted to watch.  After my hospital stay I went home, where for several days I was told not to come within ten feet of anyone else.  Try that one with young kids and a dog.   I remember waving goodnight from across the room.  Bittersweet memory. 


I was put on replacement hormone after that, and life quickly returned to normal.  I had follow-up testing, and my thyroid dose has been monitored and tweaked, but basically it hasn't been that big of a deal.  I had a great surgeon, I don't think that anyone even notices my scar.  


Generally, it was about as easy as Cancer could be.  Not fun, but not that scary, and not the end of the world.


Round two was tougher.  


I've already broken the cardinal rule of blogging, though, ("Don't make it too long") so round two can wait 'til next time.