The Second and Third Hint

Second: During the ultrasound, the lady conducting the procedure said things like “oh that’s interesting” and “let me check the lymph nodes” which may have been part of the standard procedure but I wasn't expecting it so that gave me something to think about and when I left she looked me in the eye and told me in a sincere tone of voice “good luck”. That scared me. But the fear didn’t last very long. The Third Hint: Dr Woeber called to tell me that I have two nodules in my thyroid and he wanted to order a biopsy just to be sure that it was nothing to worry about. He said that it was probably nothing but that it is always good to be sure. The day of the biopsy I was told that I have two kinds of nodules: a calcified one that would be hard to biopsy because that would be like putting a needle into a marble and a squishy one which would not be hard to biopsy. I’m pretty sure they did not call it squishy but I forgot how they described it. They said that they would biopsy both but if they are not able to get into the calcified one, they would bail quickly but that won’t be a problem because it is very rare for a calcified nodule to be cancer. Sure enough, they had to bail on the calcified one and that was no concern to me. The biopsy was not painful but it was uncomfortable. Especially when they were trying to get that calcified one. I could feel the needle pushing that marble around and it did not feel good. I was glad when they called off that part.

The First Hint

I started to wonder if I should take thyroid medicine to help with my less than normal thyroid function so I thought I should find a thyroid specialist to answer that question. I was surprised to learn that it is not easy to get an appointment with an endocrinologist. I had to start by finding one that took my insurance and the ones that had been recommended were not on my insurance plan. But I found a wonderful man at UCSF, Dr Kenneth Woeber who is a Thyroid specialist and he agreed to see me once he looked over my blood test results. I wondered if I should have been worried when his office called me the day after I sent my blood tests to schedule an appointment and he was able to see me the very next day. That was the very first of a series of hints that I probably should have been worried. When I saw the charming Dr Woeber, he asked me in his South African accent “why are you here?” and I told him that I have Hashimotos and I wondered if I should be taking thyroid medicine to make sure my body got the benefit of a functioning thyroid and he said that before we answer that question, let me examine your thyroid to see if there is anything else going on. That surprised me since I had no expectation that there could be anything except for that annoying Hashimotos. I should explain that the end game of Hashimotos is Hypothyroidism which is what my mom has so I never thought that my thyroid problems extended beyond Hashimotos. I just thought that I caught my problem earlier than mom caught hers and that; hopefully, I would be able to manage mine before I ended up with the hypo problem. As Dr Woeber examined my thyroid, he mentioned that my thyroid was enlarged – about 1.5-2 times as big as a normal thyroid. I thought that was weird but I was not really worried. He asked me 4 times if it hurt when I swallowed. And he recommended that I get an ultrasound just to make sure everything was ok. He said that he didn’t feel anything but in hindsight and with more information, I am pretty sure that he did feel one of my two cancerous nodules. Of course he did not know that they were full of cancer but I am pretty sure that he felt one of them because one of them was calcified (hard like a marble). And the reason I believe that he felt it was because a few weeks later when I met with the surgeon she told me that she could feel one of them. Anyway, off to get an ultrasound and I was not worried - my feeling was more "well, that's curious". I figured that it was a good idea to check it out and that I was doing the ultrasound just because my thyroid was enlarged - not because there might be a problem in there.