One thing that really sucks about moving 350 miles away from your family, is that when you are facing surgery, at least in my case, you are facing it alone. By "alone" I mean just with my husband and children. It's stressful. I miss my friends. I miss my parents, though my mom and brother are now living in Florida. I wish that there was at least one more adult around to help out Larry during my recovery, but I think we are just going to have to wing it..
Continuing on..
It took a few days for the full magnitude of situation of Jayden's birth to hit me...but once it did, it hit me hard. I remember, being a few days postpartum and in the shower and I got to thinking about it, how easily he could have just died, and I cried, and cried. It set my panic wheels a spinning and once again, I started a battle within myself to not let the panic and fear get the best of me. I tried to ignore it the best I could, but there were days. On top of my anxiety, my husband was having major issues with work, with one person in particular who was trying to make his life a living hell. He stuck with it as long as he could, but being that his employer was also our landlord, we needed to make some changes, and make them fast.
I was laid off when I was 32 weeks pregnant, and never called back to work. I had issues with a girl that I worked with, and for once in my professional life, I stood up to her and corrected her in an area that she was most definitely wrong in. This girl then made it her personal mission to destroy my career as a Medical Assistant, and even had my former employer convinced that I was out to get her and to sink her business and livelihood. Powerful talker, that girl. Needless to say, we were having financial difficulties and everything just kept adding up bill wise. Combine financial issues, lack of employment, just generalized unhappiness, and new drama in our neighborhood and we decided once and for all to bail. We decided to fulfill a dream that we had been discussing for years- to move up north to the Upper Peninsula. Although the circumstances for our move were less than ideal, we were convinced that we could eventually provide a better life for ourselves and our children up here than we could where we were at. The bills downstate were eating us alive, and unemployment alone couldn't cover them. There were no jobs, and the cost of living was extremely high. So we jumped.
Initially we moved to a place I like to refer to as "Prison Central". I absolutely hated it there. We lived there for 4 months and never even met our neighbor. Many people referred to our neighborhood, which was an old air force base as the "indian ghetto". The kids in the neighborhood were just unruly, to say the least. Our house was located on the first block in from the main road, which was home to several state prisons. We had the joy of listening to sirens, prison PA systems, and artillery practice? on a regular basis. We couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough.
In October, I ventured back downstate to follow up with my endocrinologist at the large hospital and to follow up with my ob/gyn group for my annual stuff. I forgot to mention right after the ectopic pregnancy, I had an abnormal pap, which lead to a colposcopy and a cervical biopsy. More prodding and poking but luckily everything on that end turned out ok... Anyhow. The endocrinologist confirmed the masses had grown, but that we would just continue to monitor and perform another ultrasound and follow up appointment in a year. This part is important. Don't forget it, ok?...
Unfortunately I ran into a little issue with my unemployment, which caused one of our rent checks to slumlord to be late. We contacted them immediately to let them know what was going on and offered to take care of the matter within two weeks, as well as cover the following month's rent at that time. Supposedly it wasn't a problem, but 3 days after Christmas, we received a 7 day notice to vacate or pay, hand delivered by the local police. All this, for rent that wasn't even a month past due! It was aggravating to say the least, but we were already looking to move again and this proved to be our "out". We found a rental home within our price range on Sugar Island. So in one day, we packed everything in our house and on to a Uhaul, and the following day we unloaded it. The house we are in now, it's amazing. I would love to buy it if it were an option. It's river front, on a dead end road. I have lovely pines in my front yard, and I have an excellent view of the outskirts of Garden River, Ontario and Squirrel Island. We have eagles that circle in front on occasion, and lots of blue jays. This place, it's a dream. It's a home. I love being here, it's so peaceful and comfortable.
Moving right along though.
I finally found a doctor up here and went to my first visit in January. It took forever to get an appointment with her because she is one of the few Osteopaths in the area, and she selects her own patients. So when I finally got to see her, I had a few issues I wanted her to look into.
1.) My voice was beginning to crack
2.) Sinus pain (chronic)
3.) severe low back pain (chronic).
So she did a once over on me, checked my vitals, and palpated my thyroid. We got to discussing my thyroid history at this time, as she pointed out my thyroid was very enlarged. I explained to her that I was just downstate a few month previous and that they said all was kosher, but the voice cracking had occurred right before they did my last biopsy in 2008, and stopped afterwards, as they had drained a lot of fluid off one of the nodules.
She was still a bit concerned, and decided to refer me to an ENT as well as ordered another ultrasound for my thyroid. She gave me a lovely adjustment for my back pain and some antibiotics for my sinus pain and inflammation and worked on getting me into an ENT.
The beginning of February, I made the three and a half hour drive to the ENT office in Marquette. This is one of the issues with living in "gods country", specialists are not as readily available, especially if you have an HMO. I read the copy of the ultrasound report that my doctor had ordered, and it said something about concern for malignancy. I didn't think much of it, however, as I had been following my previous endocrinologist's orders all along and I thought perhaps the radiologist was being extra careful, being that he or she had not seen the results of my previous scans.
The ENT doctor had all sorts of fun with me during my initial visit. He stuck a video camera up my nose and down my throat to make sure my vocal cords weren't being compressed by my thyroid and also to check for polyps, which was a concern of my new PCP. All was clear there. He checked my thyroid and could feel the masses and pretty much said a.) we can take it out, and run pathology on it and make sure it's not cancerous, and then you are done dealing with it, b.) we can do another biopsy to make sure it's still not cancerous, and then remove it. If we do it this way, I'll know if I need to take lymph nodes out while I'm in there, or c.) we can keep monitoring it, but it's not going to go away, and due to the size of the masses, I don't know how long you want to keep continuing to monitor this...
I was a bit disappointed that it sounded like surgery was in my near future, but I agreed to a second biopsy just to make sure everything was still benign. I was scheduled with the endocrinologist two weeks later. My husband, Jayden and I made the 3 1/2 hour trip alone this time, and honestly, while I was nervous about the procedure itself, I wasn't nervous about the result. As the endocrinologist was scanning my thyroid to map out the nodules before doing the fine needle aspiration, he concurred with the ENT's findings that it simply just needs to come out. He performed the biopsy, said it would be a few days for the results to come back, but that the nodules appeared to be benign.
I had to work that Friday, and when we received that call from an "unavailable" that morning, I ignored it. I figured it was either someone trying to sell something to me or a bill collector, and I didn't have time to deal with either. I went to work and figured I'd call the endocrinologist office after my shift for results. I wasn't the last bit concerned. Unfortunately, by the time I got off of work, their office was closed for the weekend.
The weekend came and went. I don't recall what we did, but I'm pretty sure it involved a lot of kids and snowmobiles, as that tends to be how our weekends go over on the Island. We always have extra kids here, usually my nephews and niece, and sometimes other family members come over and stay for the night.
Monday morning, I called the endocrinologist's office first thing, right as I was getting ready to leave for work. The nurse told me that one mass came back benign, but the other, however, was atypical. She told me there was a suspicion of malignancy, and that I needed to be referred back to the ENT and scheduled for surgery. I thanked her for the information as I choked back tears. I sat in my bedroom with the phone in my hand, shaking, as the tears rolled down my face. My husband and son were in the other room and had no clue of the information I had just received. I immediately called my place of employment and in the middle of telling the manager why I wouldn't be coming in today, i just broke down. She had no clue as to what to say to me, and I blubbered through the conversation and told her I'd call back later. I immediately called the ENT office and asked for their first available appointment, which happened to be the following day.
We ended up having to take all of the kids to this appointment, which actually worked out well. Ashia was able to watch Jayden while Kayleigh and Savannah played Barbie in the waiting room. This allowed us to go in to meet with the surgeon alone. The medical assistant printed off a copy of my biopsy report, and I read it. And it was scary. "Atypical.. some cells suspicious of papillary carcinoma".
The ENT was a bit more somber than our first meeting, but reassuring. He said "this is something to be concerned about, but not hiding in the corner in fear." He explained the procedure to me and said I'd be in the hospital overnight. I was amazingly able to hold it together during the entire visit, but inside, I was cracking. Surgery. Hospital stays. Cancer?! I'm 30! I have a one year old son and three daughters...
We ate dinner and headed on the long drive home. I was grateful for the darkness, because much of the trip I had tears rolling down my face. So many what if's. I've never been a glass half full type of girl, it's always been half empty, and I tend to focus on the worst case scenario of every situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment