Dear reader(s),
I'm sure not many people are still checking this, since I haven't posted in awhile. There really hasn't been anything to report medically for the past few months, and I'd rather stay on-topic than use this blog to discuss my personal life. But, fortunately (?), I'm back at Mayo Clinic now doing more interesting things for y'all to read about.
My family and I drove up to Rochester on the 27th and have been staying here for the past few days. We checked out the Mall of America, did a lot of shopping, saw a cool aquarium. Yesterday I met with my Mayo Endo, and today I had my first of two rounds of alcohol ablation. My coworker referred to it a couple weeks ago as an Alcoholic Vampire bite, which makes me wonder what an Alcohol Vampire would be like. Would it be like a normal vampire, but really drunk? Since vampires are technically dead and don't have blood, how would you gauge its BAC? Or would their blood simply be replaced by alcohol? Maybe they just turn all the water in your body to wine, like Jesus. Or... was Jesus an Alcohol Vampire himself? 0.0
Maybe I should stop thinking about this before I'm struck down for Blasphemy.
Okay, so, the actual event. Essentially, the procedure was pretty similar to what they do when I have a needle biopsy. I went up to Radiology, they put me in an ultrasound room and took an ultrasound of my neck, then the radiologist numbed me up and stuck a needle in my neck. With the biopsy, they do usually 6-10 stabs to collect tissue - they always say they're gonna do 4-6 but it's usually 8-10. This time it was just one poke, but the needle was in there a lot longer, and the radiologist was injecting alcohol into one of my lymph nodes the whole time. I was told the alcohol would probably burn, and it did, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I've had worse migraines. My neck is pretty sore right now, but not much more than it usually is after a biopsy.
This is definitely vastly preferable to surgery or I-131 therapy. No incisions and I get to eat whatever I want. :) And speaking of radioactive iodine, I've found some info I think is interesting - and a bit confusing.
In the main Mayo building they have a Cancer Education Center, which is kinda like a little library with books and pamphlets and things about cancer (my brother even found a book called "My Brother or Sister Has Cancer - A Book For Teens", which I told him to check out but he said he can't read...). They let me take a book out last night about thyroid disease, and I read the chapter about thyroid cancer specifically. It was written by one of the Mayo Endos (not mine) and an endo from Edinborough (which seems to be a center of a lot of thyroid research).
In the section on radioactive iodine treatment they said - rather emphatically - that radioactive iodine should be considered as an option following surgery but should really only be used in a select number of cases, and also mentioned that it can potentially lead to other cancers later in life. That last part I already knew, but I was surprised to hear (see?) a doctor recommend using radioactive iodine sparingly.
Literally every thyroid cancer patient I have ever met or spoken to has had RAI after their initial surgery. When I was diagnosed my doctors called it a "silver bullet" and praised it as a wonderful magic cure that would wipe out my cancer and end poverty and bring world peace. Obviously it hasn't actually done any of those things (yet). The book also said what my Mayo Endo told me, which is that radioiodine is often ineffective against lymph nodes with papillary cancer in them - like mine.
So it would seem that opinions about this "silver bullet" range pretty widely among endocrinologists, which made me wonder why I was led to believe, two years ago, that it was the answer to all my prayers. Curious, no? As much as I like my regular endo, this discovery makes me really glad I decided to get two opinions - obviously if there are two sides to this story I want to hear them both.
And I'm definitely doing more research from now on before I swallow radioactive materials.
Tomorrow is round 2 of Alcoholic Vampire Bite. I hear it's supposed to hurt even more since my neck is already sore from the first one. I'll update you, dear reader(s), with detailed descriptions of my pain, since I know that's what you all want to hear.
And if I turn into an Alcohol Vampire, lock your doors.
Not-so-drunkenly yours,
RG
