Thinking thyroid

This week marks the 1 year anniversary of my surgery to remove my thyroid cancer. All week it's been coming in and out of my mind and memory, but I haven't known quite what to write. As I sat with Mark on the couch on my surgery-anniversary eve, tears came to my eyes as I remembered how hard it was the week or two after the surgery. Sitting there thinking, it was like--for a moment--"here we are at the day where I just have to do it". I have to go tomorrow. I have to leave my kids, my newborn Mary Tessa. I knew then it would be hard, but now I remember how painful it really was. Do you know how much you move your neck? Can you turn your head all the way to your shoulder? Can you lay down? Can you bend over to spit after you brush your teeth--bend forward at all? Have you had oxygen tubes in your nose that make you feel like you can't breathe and panicky? Have you used a breast pump in the night while on morphine? That last one was actually a remarkably peaceful process. Anyway, enough of those complaints. I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I had the cancer that is "the one you'd pick if you had to." I'm grateful that we moved here to Houston where my husband studies at one of the top cancer treatment centers in the world. I'm grateful to have known my amazingly skilled and compassionate surgeon before he moved away 6 months ago. That he made such an impressive clean skinny incision along 6 inches of my neck and got 99.9% of my cancer out. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful that I can take care of my kids. I'm grateful I don't cry in the shower anymore. I'm grateful for the dozen times I sat in waiting rooms at the cancer center and observed and eavesdropped and saw strangers care for each other and not frivolity. I'm grateful for an endocrinologist who believes he can treat people as individuals and not textbook diseases, and is bright enough and tender enough to safely treat me and consider my wishes as a mother. I'm grateful that I got to nurse Tessa and am still breastfeeding her at 13 months.



I'm immensely grateful for Mark for bearing me up through all of this. I'm immensely grateful for my mom and my sister Catherine who came separately and saved and mothered me and mine.
I'm grateful for my faith in Jesus Christ; I never felt abandoned through this, on the other hand I felt cradled. Blessings that I received through the priesthood were critical to my spiritual preparedness to go through this and were intensely personal and healing. Angels counseled over me. I am blessed. Phew, happy anniversary.



My health update is: as of January, according to blood tests and ultrasound, I am still cancer-free and likely to remain so. I return again in July. I feel well. I take my little pill every morning. I try not to sigh when my kids do their "simultaneous arguing/talking/creating laundry" thing. I am blessed.