Angels Journey

This week Im happy to introduce you to a very special woman whom Ive recently had the joy of getting to know..

                                                      Meet Angel
  
                                

I was happily working a part time job as a elementary school library assistant while becoming certified as a youth minister. Then I worked both jobs part-time. I left the library job and worked two youth ministry jobs for two different parish churches. That didn't work because the business managers were completely miserable about it and unfair to me.

This caused much stress on me, physically and emotionally. Add that to the fact that I was going through menopause (in one week I will be 52 and am post-menopausal since age 47). The stress and peri-menopause seemingly brought on aches, pains, tiredness, weight gain, anxiety, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. My dr. started me on statins...that lowered my LDL but I then felt worse than ever so I came off them. My primary dr. ran some tests that showed elevated auto-immune numbers but they never quite could pinpoint the cause. My thyroid levels were always within normal range. A few drs. would manually check my thyroid and state that it felt a little enlarged. At one point I had a swollen lymph node that one dr. wrote off as "nothing". It did disappear.

Some years went by and last summer I felt a swollen area near my submandibular gland under my jaw, to the side. It didn't go away and actually increased in size. Six months later (last January) I called my doctors' office and was told to come right in so the lump could be checked. It was on a Saturday during the beginning of a snowstorm. I sensed that God led me to that point and didn't want to wait until my appointment with my regular dr. My husband drove me to the there and the PA told me it was probably nothing but gave me a scrip to get an ultrasound scan.

Then, the next Monday I was back in for my check-up. My dr. told me to get a CT scan before the U/S because it would show more so I went right down to radiology and did the CT scan. They gave me the cd and when I went home I put it in my laptop and saw the results before I received the written report. The radiologist recommended I get a U/S (after all that) to rule out thyca (suspicious nodule). Two days later my husband had his first appointment with my ENT (I could not get appointment with her but my husband could as a new patient-go figure!). I went with him and told her about my dilemma. She tried to reassure me that it was probably nothing/very rare...yada yada. She wanted me to get the U/S and gave me a new scrip for it.

I had the U/S which revealed a clear submandibular gland and no swollen lymphs, but a 1 cm nodule, goiter and cysts were on the thyroid. I was then set up to receive the FNA biopsy. A week later my ENT called to tell me that I was right...it was cancer on the thyroid. The strange thing was that the original lump does not show or test as cancer and is still felt on my neck! She said she would set me up for surgery and hook me up with an endocrinologist. I was not satisfied with her casual approach so I sought out a thyca endocrinologist and surgeon at a cancer center, both recommended to me by friends.

By Valentine's Day, (approximately two to three weeks from that first visit in January) I saw the surgeon and endocrinologist. Total thyroidectomy surgery was set for March 8th, 2012. They told me I might not have needed RAI but pathology revealed that my tumor was not encapsulated. There was extra-thyroidal extension into peri (not para) thyroidal tissue. I received RAI May 17.

The saga continues as the WBS for the RAI led to discovery of another "rare" cancer that I will tell you if you would like to know about it. That is where the neuroendocrine tumor story begins.

I hope my story helps you.

Angel