How I Figured it Out

Many people are curious about how I found out that I had thyroid cancer, so here is the story.....

For some time, I had been feeling fatigued during the day, having some nights of insomnia, waking up sweating, and having difficulty concentrating.  BUT, I had a baby, so I attributed all those symptoms to being a new mom.  By the time Mikayla turned 1, I started to think that some of these symptoms should have gone away by now.  Around that time I also noticed that I had a lump (kind of like an adams apple) in the bottom of my neck.  I knew my neck was bony, but the lump just wasn't in the right place.  I had a hunch that I may have a thryoid issue because I knew that the lump was around my thyroid and sometimes people with thyroid issues are tired.  I did some gooleing and then made an appointment to see my doctor. 

My doctor also thought that it may be a thyroid issue and predicted that I had a nodule.  He orded some bloodwork to test my thryoid levels and scheduled an ultrasound to find out if it was indeed a thyroid nodule.  He referred me to an endocrinologist who would take everything from here.  The bloodwork showed no issue with my thyroid levels and the ultrasound indicated that I had a nodule on my thyroid.  I did some more googleing and found some literature that stated sometimes if thyroid levels are fine and a nodule is detected, it could be cancer....definately not what I wanted to read.

When I met with the endocrinologist he wanted to do a fine needle aspiration of my nodule to determine if it was benign or cancer (90% of nodules are benign).  A fine needle aspiration is where they insert a needle into your neck to take a sample of the contents inside the nodule.  At that first appointment he took 4 samples from my neck and turned them into the lab for results.  They numbed the area of course, so it wasn't a terrible experience.  All of this happened on a Thursday afternoon.  The next Monday the nurse called at 8:15am to say I had an appointment scheduled at 9am.  This, of course, was not going to be good news.  And thus at 9:15am on Monday, March 25th, my life was forever altered.

In conclusion, I urge anyone who has strange symptoms or if something just doesn't feel right to go to the doctor.  I'm really glad that I did!