Roller Coaster Ride Continues

The cancer journey continues. The past 2 weeks have been a little intense. I haven't really wanted to share much because there has been so much to process. I needed to be able to process everything before I could talk about it with the world. This is going to be a long post. Grab a cup of tea and settle in!

The week of surgery I had a lot of blood tests run. One of them was a pregnancy test. The doctor called me on Wednesday prior to surgery to say it was positive. My first response was HOW IN THE WORLD DID THIS HAPPEN?  The doctor and I both cracked up laughing. A lot of phone calls were made between lots of doctors to see how we should proceed with the surgery. My surgeon asked me to talk with Art to see how we wanted to proceed, but she also expressed how important it was to get the cancer out of my body. I told her no matter what we decided abortion was not an option period.  I called Art and we agreed to go ahead with surgery. Precautions would be taken for the baby. My OB told me it would be perfectly fine with how early I was. 

The first 6 weeks of the pregnancy went marvelous. I had all the symptoms of being pregnant. The baby was growing, my HCG #'s were going up great, we saw a little jumping bean on the screen and a heartbeat. A beautiful heartbeat like we haven't ever seen before. And then the bleeding started. Rush back to the doctor and we still saw a heartbeat. In my heart I knew it was a matter of time. There is no way I could bleed the way I did and have a successful pregnancy. I know my body. I went back to the doctor for another check up before the weekend. I needed to know what was going on before I headed into a long weekend with no doctors. The doctor confirmed I was having a miscarriage and scheduled a D&C. 

Back to the hospital, admitting office, pre-op and operating room. All the same rooms within a 3 week period. Three weeks to be exact day of when I had my first surgery. However this surgery was not going to be as long, as major and I wouldn't have to spend the night. The morning prior to going to the doctor I had a cup of chicken noodle soup. I had to wait exactly 8 hours of when I ate before they could do the surgery. So there we sat in the pre-op waiting. Then an emergency came up and we got pushed back. I started to get REALLY cranky because I hadn't eaten in over 8 hours. grrrrrr  I told Art before going into surgery the worst part of any surgery is getting an IV. ugh! I just HATE getting an IV. This round I had to be poked twice before they got the IV in right. I wanted to cry when the first time didn't work. This was a very quick surgery 40 minutes and I was out. The recovery time was a little over an hour. We arrived at the hospital at 3pm and left at 7pm. 

In between my thyroid surgery and the D&C so very much was happening. I was going to the doctor constantly, blood tests, CT scan, ultrasounds, genetic counselors. Just nonstop! The doctors were trying to figure out how they could run tests around my pregnancy. I was concerned how would a baby make it when I had so much going wrong with my body. I have so many levels that are just off. The doctors are trying to regulate a lot. Then I was having tests run to see if the cancer spread. 

I met with my endocrinologist about 10 days after my surgery to go over my pathology report. This was one of the worst doctors appointments. The worst part of it was hearing the cancer could have spread, they are concerned it did because of my blood levels, and my life expectancy. I found out I have a very rare type of thyroid cancer called Medullary Thyroid Cancer. This type of cancer can be genetic and is a very rapid growing cancer. Only about 4% of thyroid cancer patient are diagnosis with Medullary Thyroid Cancer. Additional tests have to be run to see if it is genetic or sporadic. The areas the cancer could spread are to my liver, lungs and adrenal glands. 

An ultrasound was done on my liver and confirmed there is no cancer in my liver. I jumped for joy and had tears of joy when I got this news. For some reason I had worried there could be something wrong with my liver. I never once worried there would be anything with my lungs. I had 2 x-rays and everything looked clear with my lungs. We are waiting for one test to come back on the adrenal glands, but it does not look like it has spread to my adrenal glands. The results came back and the cancer has spread to my lungs. It is very small nodules on both lungs. At this point the doctors are still discussing how to proceed. This news has been very hard on me. The spots on my lungs have probably been harder on me then finding out I had thyroid cancer. 

There is the chance nothing will be done with my lungs. They may just monitor the nodules and my blood levels to make sure nothing is growing. My case is being referred to a board of oncologists to see if they can provide any additional thoughts. All my doctors are doing a lot of research and trying to come up with the very best treatment plan for me. My prayer is that the nodules end up shrinking and going away. One of my worst fears was chemo. I do NOT want to go through chemo period! At this point as long as the nodules do not grow then I do not need chemo. 

A lot is going to change with treatment and tests now that I am not pregnant. I have let all my doctors know I had a miscarriage and they can discuss how to proceed with my treatment plan. So we stay tuned for the future. So now we just sit and wait to hear from the doctors. I should hear something in about 10 days.

Here is my neck 3 weeks post surgery. The scar is actually doing really well! My neck is SUPER stiff! I have been massaging my neck and incision. My neck just feels hard and doesn't move very well. The doctor did say it can take sometime for everything to return to normal. Somewhere around 3 months.