Update on my thyroid cancer

I met with Dr Maturlo last Thursday after doing a blood test to see where my Thyroglobulin levels were. We did some tests last year, but I did not document them on this site. The tests last year were all good and showed that the thyroid cancer was still gone. We decided that doing a blood test once a year would be a good idea going forward and that is what I did last week. The blood test showed good results and no need to do any other tests until next year. Dr Maturlo was increasingly interested in how my cholesterol levels have dropped so much and she asked me about the supplements I was taking etc...

Surgery for Christmas

I met with Dr Denys this morning and got some answers.

The biggest questions I had were

• Where will the cut be and how long?
• Will the surgery be more like the first or second surgery as far as recovery?
• When could I do it?

He answered these and even drew me a nice picture. If you have ever gone to see Dr Denys there is a good chance he has drawn you a picture. I asked him to draw a line on my neck where the incision will be so that I can show my wife. He just made a small dot which is going to be the top of the incision. It is about an inch below my jaw bone under my ear. This means I will have a vertical cut this time where the previous cut was mostly horizontal and low. Good news is that it is mainly skin and fat tissue that will be cut so there will be very little or any messing with muscle, nerves, etc...Hopefully that means it will heal quickly. (Maybe a post Christmas snowboarding trip is still a possibility)

I edited the drawing with photoshop to show the green area in his drawing is where lymph nodes have been removed already. The yellow area is where he will remove more lymph nodes. The theory is that if we remove just the one lymph node again we may see another in a few months. There could be small cancer cells in the other lymph nodes that are not able to be detected yet. If we remove all of them then we will increase the odds of not having to do this again. 

I scheduled the surgery for Dec 18th. Which is the day I went into the MTC back in 1996 14 years ago. Man I am getting old. 

It could be an outpatient surgery with a drainage tube/bag but there is a chance I would stay a day at the hospital. We will have to wait and see. He said to plan on going home but bring a bag just in case. 

Dr Denys said the surgery would last around 1.5 hours and he knew exactly what needed to be removed and what he was going to be doing. There is not going to be much or any exploring or discovery while I am sliced open and under.  

He said the drain tube would stay in for maybe 3 days and then he could take it out. So hopefully by Christmas I will be feeling mostly recovered and ready to play with the kids.

The day before Thanksgiving (last week) I got a call from Dr Maturlo. (Endrocrinolgist)

I had an appointment the day before that I missed because I was expecting a call before coming in just in case I did not need to come in at all.

Well, come to find out I should have gone in. The tests came back with elevated levels of thyroglobulin and the scans showed another cancerous lymph node the size of a small marble. Basically the same thing we found out in March only 8 months prior.

What does this mean? More Surgery.

Dr Maturlo told me to meet with Dr Denys and have the lateral lymph nodes removed.  Basically, I need to remove them all and be done with it. I could tell she was somewhat frustrated that there is still cancer in my neck from the Thyroid cancer that was removed 3 years ago. Of course her frustration is matched and more intensified by mine where after I hung up I could not help but wonder "why did we do surgery in March?".

I immediately called Dr Douglas Denys' office and set up an appointment for the following week. Until then I did not have many answers and I had to wait a week. We told a few people, but not many since we didn't know the details yet.

Bad news before an anticipated Thanksgiving but nice that Dr Maturlo called me to give it to me rather than wait for a future appointment that could have delayed things and cost more money.

Testing Testing and more Testing - Am I clean from cancer yet?

Two weeks ago I did what I hoped would be the last of the large tests to see if the cancer was gone or not. It started with a shot in the rear end with Thyrogen. (around $1300 a shot) I then returned on Tuesday for the second shot in the neighboring cheek. (another $1300, dont worry, having met my $5500 deductible this year I am only responsible for 20%) By Tuesday I have spent an ipad3 worth of money on a sore rear in an effort to trick my body into thinking that it is HYPO thyroid. It is critical that I am hypo thyroid for my blood test later in the week so we can see if my thyroglobulin levels are where they were supposed to be. I can either stop taking my synthroid for 2 weeks or get this shot. Looking back on this I am wondering why I did not go two weeks and buy an iPad 3. Since I was in Provo already I did get to run a few errands one of which was buying a $10 bow saw at Sears and cutting a few large branches that fell on my rental property near BYU. Something about cutting some wood into smaller pieces that was therapeutic that morning.

On Wed I had a weird unrelated visit to the ER after having unbelievable abdominal pain.

On Thursday afternoon I went to do the blood tests.

On Friday I was able to move my appointment for the CT (Cat) and PT (Pet) Scans up from 8:30am to 7:30am since I had a flight to catch to Phoenix and had to be at the airport in SLC at 12. When I arrived to the Utah Valley Outpatient building (the one near Kneaders) after registering they pricked my finger and managed to squeeze out an enormous amount of blood to test my blood sugar level and test my kidneys. Those tests went well so they put an IV in my arm and gave me some radioactive liquid in a syringe to prep for the tests. Then they had me sit in a dark room and drink a lemonade (they asked if I wanted different drinks and I chose lemonade since I rarely want a soda). I sat in the dark room on a recliner (hospital style) with a blanket (also hospital style) in scrubs for around an hour in and out of conscienceness. Eventually they came to get me to take me to the room with the petscan/catscan machine.

I layed on the thin bed with my arms on my side (held in place with a velcro strap) and the bed moved into place. First were the cat scans where I moved back and forth 3 times and each time the machine would say (breath out, breath in, stop breathing). After the CT Scans the bed moved outside of the large donut so only my feet were inside of it. The PT scan took around 35 mins and every few minutes the bed would move and part of my body closer to my head would be scanned.  Eventually it was done and I changed my clothes and headed home for final travel preparations and goodbyes. I did get a paper to show the airport security just in case I set off the radiation detectors, but I did not get to use it as I set nothing off out of ordinary when I went through security.

Now I had to wait till next week to see what the blood, CT and PT scans showed.

Nothing new to update for now

It has been a few months now and I can almost forget having had two surgeries, 3 crazy low iodine diets, tons of tests and medical expenses. I will have to do more tests later this year but for now I keep taking synthroid and tomorrow I have a physical for Scout Camp. I hope my cholesterol is not high still. I am not sure if that was a result of the Thyroid cancer or not, but it is really strange to have high cholesterol when I eat healthy, exercise a ton (I biked 75 miles last Saturday), and take a very good supplement. At the same time there is some talk of high cholesterol not being the real culprit for heart disease so maybe I am just fine. Either way I'll find out tomorrow.

I have been staying busy with my lovely family, my home security systems utah business, and my natural medicine business with essential oils. Stay tuned for a future update.

Post Second Surgery

Well I got to the hospital around 6:30am yesterday with my wife. We checked in and I got changed into some amazingly comfortable paper clothes. (except the socks were cloth, but they have grip on both sides?) I waited for a little while so Sheena and I played some games on the ipad. They put an IV in me and a blood pressure band on my other arm. They also put the pulsating calf wraps on me. Someone came from Nuclear Medicine to put some radiation into the IV so that Dr Denys could tell where my parathyroid glands are and also check for anything else that should or shouldn't hold onto the radiation.
Dr Denys came in and spoke to us some. He put an X on my neck. (Marks the spot) He got the Geiger counter and tried it out and showed us how it worked. After a few minutes he said he would see me in the surgery and left. A few minutes later they came to get me and I said good bye to Sheena. That was the last thing I remembered was saying goodbye and the bed starting to roll.

I woke up around 10 am wondering if the surgery was over or not. I felt my neck and there was a bandage there and being around 90 minutes since I was last conscious I assume it was done. I could hear other things going on around me but it took around 15 minutes until they came and wheeled me to a room where Sheena was. There was another man in the room with a sheet curtain separating us. It was amazing how alert I was but my body was not ready to really move much. I was really anxious to remove the IV, blood pressure band, and calf pulsing things. (They are supposed to prevent blood clots)

Sheena said that Dr Denys called her and told her that the surgery went very well and that they removed the node and it tested positive for papillary carcinoma. He told her he felt that this should be the last of it and he did not think I needed any more radiation therapy, but I would have to talk to the endocrinologist.  What is strange is that this node does not react to the radioactive iodine. The question remains if it was really small and starting to grow 2.5 years ago and it was missed, or if it started growing after the surgery. But either way, it is gone now.

So I was feeling a little too warm and claustrophobic and ready to get stuff off me and get out of the hospital. Within a few minutes I stood up and went to the restroom with my wife helping me. I needed some help because I was so light headed still and ready to fall over at any time. After going to the restroom I returned to the bed in my shared room and Sheena helped me change back into my normal clothes. Once I was back in normal clothes we just laid on the bed for a few more minutes. We left the hospital around 11:30am and headed home.

I should have been pretty hungry considering I was fasting still, but my throat hurt more on the inside than the outside. Probably from the breathing tube or gas tube they had in my throat to keep me under. When I got home all I wanted to do sleep. Since my throat was sore I was drinking tons of water and downing doTERRA Onguard Throat Lozenges. After around a 1-2 hour nap I was ready to get up and eat some lunch.

Sheena made me a grilled cheese and a smoothie. I ate it all pretty quick, including my supplements and some essential oils in capsules. After that I was feeling pretty good so I went up to the office and made some calls for an hour or two. After I was done with the calls I went for a little walk outside with the girls and I felt pretty good.

A little while later my mom and Terry arrived with Cafe Rio and we ate and talked and played with the kids for a couple hours. Finally went to bed around 11:30pm. What a long day. I felt ok other than the sore throat and soreness around my incision, but I wondered if I should have spend more time laying down and resting and not talking.

This surgery was so much easier than the last surgery that I had done around 2.5 years ago. I feel pretty good and am looking forward to getting back to running and biking within a week or two.

I am overwhelmed by the amount of concern and support from my neighbors, friends, and family. This experience seems much lighter with the help and prayers of so many. Thank you so much. 

Surgery Second time around

I am going into the hospital in American Fork for the second time for surgery on my neck tomorrow morning. I need to get there at 6:30am and I am optimistically predicting I will be home by 11am ready to continue my day. I am hoping the surgery will not bring a long recovery. (last time was not as easy as I thought)

Hopefully they will remove the node in question and I will live the rest of my days staying out of hospitals, with exception of when we have more kids.

I am hoping there will not be any radiation therapy following this second surgery, but one step at a time.

I have another hour and twenty minutes till I need to start my fast.