"We Need to Talk About Your Pathology"

8 days ago I heard some pretty shocking words that were followed by “it was cancer but it will not shorten your life span and it will not have a major impact on your life besides the need to go back into surgery to remove the rest of your thyroid.” So I got some pretty good news with the bad and I really did hear the good but it’s almost like the world stopped spinning and everything got silent except for the echo of the word cancer. It is such a heavy word and I associate it with death, misery, and the dismantling of a body. But my version is almost like cancer-light or cancer-ish. Sure, I have some bad stuff going on in my thyroid but it is very slow moving and with this kind of cancer (papillary), as long as you catch it early, it is very easy to get rid of it. And I knew that mine was caught early. Surgery and possibly a radioactive iodine pill afterwards and I’m done. Life will go back to normal.