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girl with the good kind of cancer

“musings of a twenty-something cancer survivor”

July 5, 2013 Hearing the News–For Real This Time

On June 25 I made my way to meet with Surgeon 2. The wait to see him was quite long and I was running through the various scenarios in my mind. I heard a doctor outside of my door say, “She’s the referral from Surgeon 1? I’m going to need Amy to come talk to her in a few minutes, can you find her?” At the mention of Surgeon 1’s name, I knew he was making his way in to see me next.

Surgeon 2 walked in, greeting me with a handshake and a smile. He sat down in a stool right in front of me, filing through the papers in my chart. He looked back up and me and smiled as he said, “so you know why you’re here, right? Surgeon 1 explained everything to you?” I replied that I was referred because, “I need to have my thyroid removed, since it might be cancer.” Surgeon 2 reached his hand out, patting my forearm and looking me straight in the eyes as he said:

“Oh no, Janna. It IS cancer.”

The remainder of my appointment was slightly a blur. He used a device to go through my nose to look down my throat to ensure my windpipe was not being pressed on, explained what would happen next, uttered the annoying words that this was “the best kind of cancer to have” which basically boils down to it having a good prognosis — not an easy or painless fix, as I think is sometimes assumed.*

He said he’d see me at surgery, and that Amy (the nurse) would be with me shortly. Overall, he put me at ease and left me feeling confident about his performance of the surgery. Amy helped with that as well: she talked me through the surgery and subsequent radioactive iodine therapy I would be going through in the coming weeks and months.

Surgery is set for July 10 so now it’s just a countdown while the cancer hangs out in my body…

*I will address the “best kind of cancer” and “the good cancer” comments & assumptions in a later post. I think it’s deserving of it’s own commentary 🙂

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