Okay. Just writing for a minute to get a few thoughts out so they stop bouncing around in my head.
I have to have the routine one-year follow up test to look for cancer. It has been more than a year since my diagnosis and surgery, but at the time that I was supposed to get the test, I was pregnant with Audrey and then I was breastfeeding, and then I decided to move to Tennessee and basically life just got in the way of getting the test done. But now I have no excuses and it has to be done.
The test itself starts with a series of two shots, then I get a tracer dose of radioactive iodine, then I go for a full body scan to see if there is any cancer anywhere in my body. When thyroid cancer spreads, it usually goes to lungs and/or bones first, so the doctors need a scan of my entire body.
I’m currently on a low/no iodine diet, which I hate. It’s not that the diet is so bad, necessarily, but I am a grab-and-go eater. I hate cooking and this diet forces me to cook because I can’t eat anything that I haven’t prepared myself. I have to do this diet for about three weeks. I’m on day two and already feel stabby.
But the reason I’m sitting down to write is that for some reason I have tons of anxiety about this cancer test. I didn’t think that I did until yesterday and it just kind of hit me all of a sudden. I guess part of it stems from my track record with doctors and hospitals. My new endocrinologist (who I love, by the way), Dr. S., says there is nothing worrisome in my file and that this scan is just routine. Yeah, but every doctor I saw before told me that I probably didn’t have cancer in the first place. Dr. G. was as surprised as I was when the pathology came back positive for follicular cancer.
Not to mention my troubles when I had my appendix out when I was sixteen or when I had Audrey. It seems that if anything can go wrong, it will.
I don’t remember having this much anxiety when I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s probably partly because when I found out that I had cancer, I didn’t really have to deal with that knowledge for very long because I was in surgery just a couple of days later. And it’s probably partly (and maybe more importantly) because I didn’t have Audrey back then. I have a lot more to lose if the test results aren’t in my favor.
I have to have the routine one-year follow up test to look for cancer. It has been more than a year since my diagnosis and surgery, but at the time that I was supposed to get the test, I was pregnant with Audrey and then I was breastfeeding, and then I decided to move to Tennessee and basically life just got in the way of getting the test done. But now I have no excuses and it has to be done.
The test itself starts with a series of two shots, then I get a tracer dose of radioactive iodine, then I go for a full body scan to see if there is any cancer anywhere in my body. When thyroid cancer spreads, it usually goes to lungs and/or bones first, so the doctors need a scan of my entire body.
I’m currently on a low/no iodine diet, which I hate. It’s not that the diet is so bad, necessarily, but I am a grab-and-go eater. I hate cooking and this diet forces me to cook because I can’t eat anything that I haven’t prepared myself. I have to do this diet for about three weeks. I’m on day two and already feel stabby.
But the reason I’m sitting down to write is that for some reason I have tons of anxiety about this cancer test. I didn’t think that I did until yesterday and it just kind of hit me all of a sudden. I guess part of it stems from my track record with doctors and hospitals. My new endocrinologist (who I love, by the way), Dr. S., says there is nothing worrisome in my file and that this scan is just routine. Yeah, but every doctor I saw before told me that I probably didn’t have cancer in the first place. Dr. G. was as surprised as I was when the pathology came back positive for follicular cancer.
Not to mention my troubles when I had my appendix out when I was sixteen or when I had Audrey. It seems that if anything can go wrong, it will.
I don’t remember having this much anxiety when I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s probably partly because when I found out that I had cancer, I didn’t really have to deal with that knowledge for very long because I was in surgery just a couple of days later. And it’s probably partly (and maybe more importantly) because I didn’t have Audrey back then. I have a lot more to lose if the test results aren’t in my favor.
So those are my thoughts. While most of my brain thinks everything is going to fine, there is part of my brain that keeps replaying all the things that went wrong in the past and could go wrong now. Hopefully, over the course of these next few weeks, that doubting part of my brain will shut off, or at least quiet down to a dull roar.
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