Dear reader(s),
Apologies for not posting after my second alcohol ablation as promised. My life is crazy. And also it wasn't that eventful, nor did it hurt very much more. But I did get juice afterwards. That was pretty sweet.
The questions I got when I got home were along the lines of, "So is it gone now?" "Do you still have cancer?" and "Are you in remission, or what?" Unfortunately I don't really have any answers. I'll go back to Mayo in 3-6 months for a followup, and even then I doubt they'll declare me in remission, especially if my TG levels are still...well, existent.
Probably the worst part about my situation is that I have to do a lot of waiting. And explaining. People tend to understand thyroid cancer better in terms of things they're used to associating with more common cancers...chemotherapy, remission, etc. But those things don't really apply to me, which in some cases is good (yay for no chemo!) and in others is bad (i.e. I don't know if I'll ever get a formal declaration from a doctor that I am in "remission"). Since my cancer is weird and slow-growing I just get to sit here and wait and see what it does. Fun, right?
Really all I can do is try not to think about it and keep living my life. This is considerably harder to do with a weird visible scar that strangers always feel the need to stare at and ask about (see my months-old post regarding scar etiquette), but I soldier on nonetheless.
In keeping with that spirit, I've been mostly focusing on my upcoming trip to Europe. I will probably start up a new blog about that soon; stay posted for links (and maybe some German lessons?) in the next week or so.
Wishing there were better magazines in this waiting room,
RG
P.S... I just realized that the words on the paper in the background of this blog are in German. WEIRD.
Not too long after I got back to work, a guy I work with and who sees me fairly often looks at me as says "whats wrong with your neck?" I sort of thought he was joking since id been gone for 6 weeks but when I wheezed out that I had cancer (this is when I almost had no voice) he didnt really believe me. That was sort of my first time dealing with the whole scar thing. Anyway im glad to hear things went well. Keep your head up and dont let it keep you from doing what ever it is you want to do.
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