2007 nearly over....

Thought I'd better get one more post in before 2007 finally (and thankfully) bites the dust. I've been on the thyroxine for just over a month, all seems to be well, its taken a while to kick in, but I think it did just after Christmas. Unfortunately for my mum this was just as I was in London helping her move - I felt a bit like a manic weightlifter on speed, although my muscles aren't quite up to my expectations of them. I hope this means that my weight will now go back down again. My scales aren't very reliable or accurate but my belt notches are and I've gone up at least one in the past month. My sister in law - who strangely had her thyroid out for different reasons about two months after me said she put on 36lbs in the first 6 months on throxine. She was rake thin and needed some extra pounds, I look forward to seeing her in the new year and hope this isn't the face (or arse) of things to come.

Happy New year - it's got to be better than the last one...

no to revolution

I've just had a real life TV dilemma that made me think I need to get out more and watch less TV. Should I watch two fat men throwing darts at a board, or an pixie-like Australian being cute? Well - I went for the fat men in the end, and sadly found it gripping. See - I need to get out more.

I started my thyroxine today. This is it now for the rest of my life. I find myself worrying about a breakdown in society, drying up my drug supply. A Judge Dredd distopia where I can only get them on the illegal market for more money than I can raise. I know on a mild scale what it's like to be thyroid hormone-less and it's crap. So cancer has not only put me through the ups and downs of the last year, it's also compromising my revolutionary desires. Ok, so they were pretty armchairish anyway, but still.....

Keep our NHS Public!

This blog has been all about my treatment for thyroid cancer. Although I've got issues with the way I've been dealt with at different points along the way, my treatment has all been free and if I don't like the way the NHS is going politically I can - at least nominally - vote for a different party who will fund the NHS properly to do its job (yes, I know you can't get a blue Rizla between the political parties in the uk at the moment - but its the principle).

In the US healthcare is almost entirely determined by the publically unaccountable shareholders of the insurance companies that provide the healthcare - resulting in a grossly unequal health care provision and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world. So - if you want to fight for the NHS to stay public and against the creeping privatisation that is invading the principle of free healthcare, come along to the Keep Our NHS Public demo on Saturday in central London - more details here - http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php the unions involved are funding coaches from different parts of the country - details on the website.

negativity

Well - I shouldn't be so negative. The consultant in charge of me at the Oncology Centre rang me in person on Friday morning to tell me that the whole body scan I'd had was clear, and that he'd be seeing me soon to sort out my T4. Fantastic! and thank you....I'll just wait for the letter. I'm happy enough on the T3 at the moment apart from having trouble remembering to take it. It's started to kick in again, and tonight I've actually been out for the evening and managed reasonably sensible conversation although I still can't take a drink.

freedom

I'm out. Got out yesterday afternoon in fact - time off for good behaviour? I'm fucked though, I was sitting outside the hospital waiting for my lift and I was thinking - is this the same person who cycled clear across the city only two weeks ago? - and if you knew this city you would know that would be mean at least one hill of moderate proportions. Walking up the the stairs is presenting a challenge at the moment. What would life be if you had an underactive thyroid? Lethargic and depressed I guess. Well - I'm back on the T3 and waiting for it kick in, got kind friends who are looking out for me, and my own comfy sofa in front of a fully functioning TV - who could want for anything more. And to top it all it looked as if the whole body scan they gave me before I left was completely clear! There certainly isn't any trace of thyroid left in my neck....Only change is constant as old Charlie would say. The next hurdle is going onto the T4 and dealing with another new consultants face, but I'm getting better at it - smile, and.....breathe!

rainy tuesday

it's been raining all afternoon, that special grey Bristol rain that looks like it'll never stop - and quite often doesn't for a few days. Kind of suits the mood. I watched Good Will Hunting, too schmaltzy for a hypo-so-low rainy Tuesday, I hate when Hollywood movies make cry, although it was well acted and kind of nicely underplayed really. I'm trying to make a very short film while I'm in here, but I'm running out of hard disc space. Here's a still from it.....

second time around

Ho hum, the incarceration begins….. I’ve got the room with the view again which is great. This posting is being brought to you by the generosity of The Scotchman and his Pack, a fine Bristol pub round the back of the hospital who have given me the key for their wireless network so I can use it. How cool is that? I’ll be in for a pint just as soon as I can. Things are much the same as last time, although I’ve noticed the TV selection is better in the autumn. The aerial for the TV is bandaged onto the top of the TV with half a reel of inappropriate sticking plaster and keeps falling off. Still I suppose it gives me something to do.

Saturday diet

what I ate yesterday. Saturday is an unusual day in that I have time to have something other than my normal breakfast of meusli with apple juice and a piece of home made bread with sunflower spread and marmalade. I can tell your mouth must be watering already....

• fried potato white egg omelette with home made bread toast with olive oil on it, cup of tea with milk (I'm allowed a little dairy and cutting it out of the morning cup of tea is a step too far...)
• lunch - baked beans on toast another cup of tea, try to remember to drink some water.
• snack- matzo with tahini on it - tahini has become a staple on this diet and is actually quite nice. Couldn't say the same for the matzos but they are a vehicle for the tahini in much the same way as lettuce is a vehicle for salad dressing
• Home made Harira for dinner made with lamb and lots of other delicious things - it's a Moroccan recipe and very tasty I made enough for a about a month of hypo non cooking so I guess I'll be sick of that in a few days. It's in the freezer so I don't have to eat it all at once. Modern technology eh? Also had baked apple stuffed with dates and covered with honey which I burnt guttingly watching the All Blacks (not all in black - I think that was the problem) being beaten by France. It made a nice change from my staple of Spag Bol which i seem to eat a lot of and Roast Chicken. I also had a very nice bottle of 'katy' cider which i would much recommend whatever your state.

Blimey - what am I complaining about? The problem with all whole thing isn't so much that it's a bit restrictive but that you have to check the labels on everything and you can't just say - sod it I'll have pizza tonight.

I don't think I'm hypo at all, but then it's only been a week. But I didn't sleep at all well last night - that's what comes of reading crime fiction as you're dropping off - either that or it's indigestion.

Cheese in the fridge

I've got a big lump of cheddar in the fridge left by a friend living in Barcelona who forgot to take it back with him. People living in Barcelona always want cheddar when they come over - in my vast, three people experience. I'm joining them. You don't realise how much you eat of something til you can't eat it any more. Two weeks to go til I get nuked again and I'd better start taking this low iodine thing seriously. There are so many random things to steer clear of it's difficult negotiating food, and I haven't bothered so much this time. It's too boring to even write about, but if you're reading this because you came across it while you looking for stuff about Thyroid cancer and you want some tips, leave a message.

This blogging business is a bit like having one of those Tamegotchi fake pets that kids have, you feel you have to keep feeding it or it will die, but really it's a kind of pointless circular thing. Like - is anyone actually reading it? I don't think I'm a putting down in black and white kind of person - its a bit committing for my liking, but I suppose its good to have a record.

Here we go again

All that Moroccan loveliness is forgotten. I've just started my next bout of Low Iodine diet - 3 weeks of tedium and no butter. I am allowed to eat the chemical slurry that is sunflower spread, but having had one scraping of it earlier today I've just remembered that I ended up using olive oil instead last time. And I'm wishing I'd written down what I did for food last time. It seemed like it would be forever printed on my brain while I was doing it, now all I can remember was that I made popcorn. That's not going to keep a girl going - particularly not one whose car is broken and who is having to cycle everywhere. Well - better go and get my home made bread out of the oven (you never know what they use for raising agents). And I'd better remember to remind the unfortuante people who invited me round for dinner that fish and diary are off the menu. Big steaks are fine though....

Birds of the Atlas

I forgot to mention (maybe deliberately - don't want any preconceptions) that I like birdwatching. My kagoul is a bright shade of purple though so I don't fit very well into the birdwatching mould. However, I do like a good bird list so here's my (rather incomplete, but Atlas specific) list:
Moussiers Redstart (first one up on the hill from the Tarkeditt Plateau)
Tristrams Warbler
Hoopoe (lots, but still fab!)
Bee-eaters
White Storks over Marrekesh and at Telouet Kasbah
Thekla Lark
Black Wheatear all over the place
Black Redstart
Lesser Kestrels in flocks!
Peregrine Falcon
Booted Eagle
one Egyptian Vulture
Alpine Choughs wheeling round in big and acrobatically noisy gangs - great round the Toubkal refuge amongst other places.
Levaillans green woodpecker - seen by chance at the end of a particularly arduous days walking (pic by Nora- thanks)
Thanks also to Yacha who knew all of the birds and could say what they were without me having to spend ages leafing through my book and Yassin who taught me some of their names in French - handy should I ever want to show off to a French birdwatcher....

Lovely Morocco

Blimey! It's nearly the end of August!

Well, I completed my trek through the Atlas Mountains, and fell in love with Morocco. We did 320Kms in 17 days - some days walking for 10-11 hours. The first couple of days were exhausting and I doubted whether I was fit enough for it, but I found my walking legs by the third day and the whole trek was amazing. For 17 days the most difficult decision I had to make was whether to pander to the gods of international capitalism and have a Coke at the end of the day. It was a strain having to face 11 other people over breakfast every morning (especially on the many days that breakfast was at 6 in the morning), but apart from that it was a great experience.

Right at the end we climbed Jbel Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa (4100m) and I cried - of course in that quiet English off in a corner way - there were points this year when I didn't think that I would be able to do it, but I did. I don't like all this 'cancer survivor' stuff - it makes it seem like the illness is your whole identity, which with thyroid cancer it most definitely isn't, but still I felt proud of myself for making it through the trek - and with no alcohol and a minimal amount of swearing.

Now I'm back and the cold harsh reality is that I have another bout of Radioactive iodine treatment in the middle of October. I'd arranged the date already with the lovely women in the radioactive isotope dept although as always I've had no official notification of this. We're back to my old complaint - how can you try to keep your life normal when you're never really sure whats happening when? I'm still pretty chilled out from being on holiday so I'm not going to get wound up by THEM (whoever THEY are) but I wish they'd get their bloody act together.

Here's a pic of what I've been walking through for nearly three weeks. The pictures are in my head and I can't quite believe that it happened. Walking your feet off has got to be one of the best therapies there is if you can.

back in the real world

Ah - haven't been here for a while. Funny little stories about forgetfulness off the T3 - that wasn't going hypo. Paralysed by panic in the middle of the street because I'd just locked myself out of the house and couldn't think what to do about it (apart from lie in the road and cry) - that was going hypo. Flopping about too knackered to do anything very much but fed up about it - that was going hypo. Crying over the plight of Stella in Eastenders.... - no it's OK that didn't really happen! It's taken longer to get over than I thought it would, and I went back to work too early. And basically I just couldn't be arsed logging into this and trying to write something.

Anyway - the T3 has kicked back in and I'm trying to get fit again for a marathon - and slightly foolhardy - trekking holiday in the Atlas mountains. This week I have been cycling to work. I am hoping that my legs will stop aching from it next week. The holiday doesn't have the opt out of getting on the jeep on account of the fact that all the portering is being done by mules, so it's walk or nothing. I should be fit by the end of it, if not the start.

As a little political aside - Victory to the Postal Workers! who have just come out on strike this evening. Good luck to you all.

hanging on in quiet desperation

The clouds were good today. I passed a pleasant hour with my feet up on the radiator watching them to a Pink Floyd soundtrack. Don't judge too harshly - I'm not up to much else.

Tomorrow I get out of here. Neck scan first thing in the morning then I get picked up and taken back to freedom. There is nothing I can think of that I will miss about being in this room. I want to back on the T3 with a working brain and walkinh somewhere instead of just on the spot in my head virtual walking.

Here is a poor quality pic of the view from the window, although its actually better than this. It's just here because I can....

nothingness

Thank the lord for crazy doctor 'mummy' May and a decent EastEnders for a change! And for Bill Bailey and Black Books. Apart from that I'm bored out of my mind - although to be fair there really would be something wrong with me if I wasn't.

Things I'm glad I bought with me - this laptop, a digital camera - another gizmo to while away a bit of time fiddling with - and most surprisingly of all, a decent pair of Sennheisser headphones so I can listen to stuff loud.

Well, got another 2unit time slot to fill with a couple of episodes of Black Books and it'll be time to turn in for an early night with my book. And I've still got Hello magazine saved up for tomorrow when my brain really has turned to mush (although I've got a bad feeling that Hello might speed the process....)

night night world out there.

room with a view

I doubt this is going to be a very interesting part of the blog – apart from as an experiment – as I am in a room 4 and a half paces by 7paces (and I have short legs), and despite bringing a big activity bag with me I can feel myself slipping into a slough of inactivity which will lead to inertia before long. I’m truly living up to my name though and have the contents of a small branch of Dixons here. Still wish I’d bought my PDA it’s got a better mic on it.

The radiographer kindly let me hear what I sounded like on the Geiger counter after I took the radiocative iodine – after the traditional 4 hour wait. It was less exciting than I expected. The best thing is that I have a room with a stunning view over the whole of the city and I can tell I’ll be spending a lot of time just watching the clouds go by.

Question of the day – is having soft underarms really that big a selling point for a deodorant? Wish I’d remembered to bring beer…..

Now - why did I come upstairs.......

Things not to do when you're hypo:

• Go shopping in Asda on a Saturday afternoon. This would probably extend to going shopping in any supermarket on any day, but it was particularly manic this Sat.
• Try to remove the Special Needs baby blackbird from the kitchen - although by the time he hopped out of the open window I decided he probably wasn't special needs, just kicking back against authority, rebellious teenager blackbird as he seemed to know exactly what he was doing once he decided to go.
  
• Become an e bay seller for the first time - especially if you've set your auction to end 12 hours before you go into hospital for four days. I spent an hour and a half on Friday pm trying to find one of my auction items to answer a question, what with not knowing where I'd put it, coupled with forgetting what I was doing every 10 mins. Unusually for me I had put it away somewhere sensible and it was hanging innocuously in the wardrobe under a shirt. So I guess that leads to point four....
• Change long established patterns of behaviour for new and better ones.
  

So I'm just going to leave my house a mess and hope that the mum fairy who has come to visit might at least wrestle the vacuum out and put it over for me.....

hypo loco

So here I am nearly three months later, waiting for my Radioactive Iodine treatment to start on Monday. In preparation I'm on a low iodine diet which you would think would be easy but it involves no dairy - therefore no cheese - and they advise you to make your own bread as you never know with the shop bought stuff.

I've never been on a diet in my life and hate having to think about what I'm eating all the time. I'm eating unnatural amounts of fruit and dreaming of salt and vinegar crisps. In fact I'm going to take a big bag in with me so the minute they say I can come off the diet I can amuse myself by eating them.

I've stopped taking my T3 - thyroid hormone replacement tablets - which will make me hypo ready for treatment. It makes the iodine thing work better, but has the bonus side effect of making you too dull and stupid to care that you've got to sit in a room on your own for 3-4 days with only the first two series of Buffy for company. That's right - no visitors and even the nurses don't pop in to see you. Someone slides your food under the door three times a day and they measure you with a geiger counter once a day to see when you'll be safe to let out again.

Actually I'm just over a week in and feel OK although things get muddier as the day wears on. I shall be having trouble following the plot of Eastenders by the end of the week. Oh well. So typing coherently is hard work at this time of night so I think I'll stop and go to bed.

carved up at last

Actually it's a bit unfair to say carved up as the surgeon did a fantastic job and I imagine in a years time you'll barely be able to see I had an operation - even though the scar is about 20 cms long (had to go off to find a tape measure and piece of string there.) I had my op on the 16th March, with my nice consultant and an audience of hundreds - it felt like anyway, given the number of students who came on the ward round beforehand. One of the nurses said they liked having max facs patients on the ward as the doctors were good looking. Glad I helped make someone happy.

The op lasted 4 hours - it's a weird sensation to go up to theatre in broad sunshine - not that you could really see it through the grime of the hospital windows - and come back down as it's getting dark. The op was fine, I was relieved when the surgeon came out and told me the muscle in my neck was still there and he didn't think he'd damaged my voice or calcium producing parathyroids. But I woke up with drains coming out of either side of my neck, an oxygen mask on, a catheter in and a drip going into the back of my hand. I was pinned down on my back by the tubes and didn't dare move in case anything came loose.

Bang went any idea of a nice cup of tea when I came round. In fact, bang went any idea of sleep for the night. Hospital wards are noisy places and you get very closely monitored all night - not helped by the panic that set in every time they found my temperature raised, pushing my heartbeat up. I was terrified of catching something whilst I was in there and not being able to come out for days. No idle worry as it turned out - two weeks after I was in there 8 wards in the hospital had to be closed because of infection. Yikes! I got off lightly...... I won't go into details as its not very interesting, but the nursing care was excellent, the other patients were nice and we were all very supportive of each other. Good to get out though - I had the op on a friday, they let me go on the Monday.

My tips for quick recovery from an op - if you get a chance to prepare beforehand - take arnica for 10 days or so before and a few days after, take mega amounts of Vit C and don't take refuge in alcohol as a coping mechanism - just in case you were thinking of it. I'm healing up well, despite a uncomfortable feeling in the muscles in my neck still. I could drive and cycle fairly soon after, but the feeling still hasn't come back to the skin in my neck, which is a shame as I liked that bit. It may do, it may not.

yes it defintely is

The next appointment came really soon after the biopsy, and it was confirmed that I definitely had papillary thyroid cancer. It was a relief actually to know it was definitely this as the consultant had mentioned the possiblilty of it being some sort of metastasis of a more 'serious' cancer (my words, not his). As you can imagine this gave a whole new flavour to the early morning insomnia.

So the next hurdle was the op. When to have it? Who to do it? Would I still have a voice at the end of it? Would I have a missing muscle in the side of my neck? Would I be on calcium tablets for the rest of my life? Blimey - those pre op warning things you have to go through don't help the anxiety levels. I wanted the consultant I had been seeing from the max facs team to do it, but he was off to Australia for 10 days so I would have to wait til he got back. So began the juggling act of ops and theatre time that is the NHS. I won't go into long boring details, but sorting out when the op would be and who would actually be doing it was one of the most stressful parts of a pretty stressful process, although I was probably projecting a lot of fear - of not being able to speak, of things going wrong - onto it all. So I would like to apologise now to anyone at the hospital that I shouted at or hung up on..... It was actually sorted out reasonably well in the end, with not too much waiting and with the consultant I wanted. It felt like an eternity though. Remember I had been expecting to have this op since the beginning of January and it was now mid March.

Wiltshire Farm Foods

On the 9th Feb I popped along to the hospital for my op. The whole day was a surreal and unecessarily unpleasant experience. First of all, you have to arrive at 7.30 in the morning at the Clinical Support Unit. Why so early? The wards don't start chucking people out until at least 10am. Luckily it doesn't take long to get ready as you can't have breakfast or anything to drink before you come. The CSU is the another depressing place to hang about. Unlike most other bits of the hospital that I had to wait in there was no TV and it was freezing cold once you'd been sat there a while - and I ended up sat there for 6 and a half hours.

They couldn't find a bed for me and it was getting closer and closer to the time I was going to have my op and they still didn't have a bed. This seems to be quite a common thing - how much does that cost then? Surgeons, anaethetists, nurses, operating theatre time, all booked up, all possibly not able to do their job because there's no bed. It doesn't make sense. And I wasn't the worst of it - at least I'm reasonably young, fit and well - there were two older women in there with me also waiting for ages. On top of everything else we were all starving and on the table in front of us was a big pile of Wiltshire Farm Foods brochures - full of pictures of plates of food. Is that really necessary? I know they don't look tasty (its a sort of privatised version of meals on wheels) but hey - it's food and I hadn't eaten since 9pm the night before.

A bed was eventually found on the day ward - fine by me as I shouldn't have needed to stay the night - and I had my op. This one was very brief and I was round and out of the hospital as soon as I could stagger about on my own two feet. Just as well as the ward was about to close as I left.

I don't want to sound like I'm endlessly moaning, because I've read some American accounts of dealing with their health system and it makes me eternally grateful that we've got a public health system that is free and accountable to us and not just shareholders. But it does seem to be very badly put together. Each bit of it does their job well, and I've been treated all along by incredibly skilled people, but the system itself doesn't seem able to join up the bits. For example - I'm treated across three different sections of the trust I'm in, and I have separate number for each one. How much potential does that provide for administrative fuck ups? Everyone tells you that the one thing you should aim for when you have cancer is to keep things as normal as possible, but this is impossible when you're kept waiting, waiting waiting, never knowing how long you're going to have to wait for the next bit of the process. It also means you can't plan anything - one of the things about this cancer - and I imagine quite a lot of other cancers - is that it doesn't actually make you fell unwell and isn't really debilitating so it is quite possible to carry on leading a perfectly normal life if only the NHS would let you. You would have to have extraordinary powers of zen not to get wound up by it - and believe me I got wound up....

yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is.....

After a nail biting three and a half week wait I finally had my MRI scan - scheduled to co-incide almost exactly with the staff Christmas dinner. I didn't dare try to change it - who knows when another window might have opened in the hectic NHS scanning timetable. I realise now that this was pretty quick - a result of the hospital having to meet government targets, although I don't know what these are. I then spent a pleasant Christmas and New Year unsuccessfully trying not to worry about the possible results.

I went back for the next appointment with Kath to act as my advocate and to listen properly to what was said. The scan results backed up the diagnosis of papillary thyroid cancer, although this time I was told that the cell results from my thyroid were inconclusive and that those from my lymph node were suspicious but not diagnostic. A slightly different story from the previous visit. However the scan results were good enough to make it worth carving me up and removing my thyroid and my left side lymph nodes. I was a bit surprised about the change in story but it didn't register properly until I had left the hospital.

So, I'm hanging about, putting off work waiting waiting waiting for the operation when I get a call from the hospital saying that they want to do another needle biopsy - this time a slightly bigger one to get a better sample. Although I felt pissed off at being messed around I was quite glad that they had decided to make sure that it was necessary to remove all my neck bits. After this sample, and a number of phone calls to my consultants secretary I was handed over to the Max Facs team. This stands for maxilo facial, and no, I still have no idea what this means other than that they deal with head and neck surgery. It seems that because they would be involved in the surgery - doing the lymph nodes bit - their team was involved in the whole process. I went in for a consultation with a consultant from this team. This was very different matter from previous consultations. I was shown my MRI scan (couldn't help admiring what sharp images they were) and their concerns were explained to me. In fact the biopsy evidence was still so inconclusive that they didn't want to operate without being sure, so they decided to do a exicision biopsy - cutting a bit of the offending lump - so that they would have definite answer. So a date was arranged for my first bit of surgery - 9th Feb, at least 6 months after I had initially gone to the doctors.

shock news!

This is going to speed up now, because I'm getting bored of looking back at it, and my memory is going a bit fuzzy.... I came back at the beginning of November from a very pleasant sleeping holiday in France to find a letter from the hospital telling me that the blood, x ray and needle test I had had were all normal. I breathed a sigh of relief - I hadn't realised how anxious I had been until I was let off the hook like that. I celebrated with a pint up the road and waited for my - what I considered a formality - appointment a couple of days later.

This time I had to wait an hour to be seen. The clinic was incredibly busy and some people there had been waiting from the morning session - so I guess I was lucky. I whiled away the time catching up on the celeb gossip and some afternoon TV (which for some reason is even worse than the morning) until I was put into an examination room for a bit more waiting. I'm not sure why the hospital does this - presumably to up your anxiety levels. A different doctor came in this time, and instead of telling me I was fine to go, everything normal, she told me that the ultrasound scan looked suspicious and that they were going to do an FNA and maybe also a MRI scan to see what was going on. I was a bit shocked. I'm not sure how quickly we got onto the C word, or who brought it up first, but she assured me it was very treatable, that surgery would sort it out, and basically there wasn't much to worry about. Of course not, it is after all only cancer.... Flailing around for another possible explanation for the ultrasound I asked if it could be anything else - but she obviously had decided that that was enough. "Could be TB" she replied rather snappily I thought. Not very likely - particularly as the chest x ray was clear. She left, I left, a bit more shocked, and stumbled downstairs to hand in my card for another ultrasound scan.

On the 16th November I had my next FNA this time by ultrasound so that they could be sure that the cells were from the right lumps. All pretty straightforward and the ultrasoundist put a note on the test to make sure that it was processed in time for my next appointment at the lumps clinic on the following Weds.

I went to this appointment on my own - which I regret. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation try to take someone with you all the way through - it definitely makes a difference. Anyway - things were a bit calmer in the clinic this time and I only had to wait briefly in the waiting room with the distracting things to do. Then I was shown into another examination room for some more anxious no-distractions waiting before the consultant came. He brought with him a little mouse student doctor who looked rather uncomfortable throughout the consultation I thought. He told me that they had found abnormal cells in my thyroid and in my lymph node and the solution was surgery and raioactive iodine. Hurrah! To his credit, when I told him I had read a bit about it on the internet he looked quite relieved - I obviously knew it was very treatable and wouldn't be doing any of that embarassing breaking down, getting in a state stuff. Funny thing is though, I don't think the C word was mentioned during this consultation, although I think we both knew what we were talking about. He told me I would be having an MRI scan and would have the appointment within the next two weeks (a very important distinction I later discovered, from having the scan within the next two weeks, the subletities of the wording escaped me at the time...). He was very kind and tried to be reassuring, and I left, on my own again, to shakily cycle home. At NO POINT in any of this process so far did ANYONE mention ANY sort of support being available from ANYWHERE. I have since discovered that this is common for thyroid cancer patients, and I'm sure for other sorts of cancer patients too.

one stop clinic

My first visit to the hospital was on 22nd Sept 2006. I think it might be my first visit to this hospital ever. I was given an appointment for the breast clinic, despite the lump being in my neck, which caused a bit of alarm - what if they got my records mixed up, cut my breast off by mistake! The afternoon session though is for general lumps - of course. I think I only had to wait half an hour for this session, and was quite impressed that I was taken into an examination room and had my blood taken, my lump sampled (fairly painlessly) and sent downstairs for an x ray all at the same time. The x ray dept must be one of the most depressing places to work ever. It's lit by grim, not quite powerful enough fluorescent lights and the ceiling squats on your head like a threat. There is no natural light at all. And it's full of ill people. There were no chairs left in the bit I had to wait in - anyway, I could stand without pain so would have felt a bit bad occupying one. I had my lungs x rayed and was given a card to make an appointment for the final part of the process - an ultrasound scan.

I had the ultrasound a couple of weeks later - the ultrasoundist (what is their proper name?) took a long time and kept pointing at things on the screen to a doctor who was in the room with her. Being an eternal optimist I decided that the unease I felt in there was just down to normal hospital paranoia although I was a bit unnerved by the silence and the way they both went out of the room while they waited for the pics to print. At this point I was reassuring myself with my extensive internet research which said only approx. 3% of thyroid lumps were malignant. The ultrasoundist said I did have a lump in my thyroid and that I would probably have to come back for a FNA (fine needle aspiration - oh yes, I've got all the medical jargon now) under ultrasound. I walked out of there feeling a bit unnerved but trying to get myself to keep things in perspective. No point worrying about things until you knew there was something to worry about. Yeah right - that one works at 3pm on a sunny Autumn afternoon, but is no use at all at 3am with morning a long and dark way off.

In the beginning

Last July I noticed a lump on my neck and got myself along to the doctor, who referred me to the lumps clinic at the hospital (the breast clinic to be precise - first point of confusion). After a lot of poking , pricking and scanning - not to mention a quick bit of carving up - I was diagnosed in January with papillary thyroid cancer. Oh dear. A number of friends have suggested that I should write down what is happening to me - partly so I can give the patients advice and liason service in my local health trust the benefits of my experience, and partly so I stop ranting at them and spoiling a good pint. So I've decided to try blogging the whole sorry process and maybe make some sense of it all. Well, the worse that can happen is no one reads it and another medical masterpiece goes unnoticed.

The first thing I should say if you're still reading is that thyroid cancer is very treatable. Which as you can imagine is a big relief. The consultant who finally gave me my diagnosis described it as a lazy and indolent cancer. Hey! How did it know to take up residence in me? Anyway - as with many cancers no one is really sure what causes it, although it is strongly linked to exposure to radiation. I don't suppose this is why, but I did travel back through eastern europe about a month and a half after Chernobyl went up - including through Poland which I know was affected by fallout. And this gives my illness a pleasing socio-historical dimension I quite like the sound of....it can take a long time after exposure to develop - but I'm not sure its that long. Well, it's either that or those bird watching trips round Dungeness were more dangerous than they appeared. So - that's the start of it. What I thought I would do is to run through the diagnosis (which took some time what with everyone wanting their say) in a series of installments until I've caught up with myself as I am now then I can just add to it as things happen, or I feel a burning need to say something. But not right now as I'm off to Manchester in the morning and it's a long and tedious drive up the motorway.