Patient Profiles

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2005. After a routine physical, the nurse practitioner referred me to an endocrinologist because the lump in my neck seemed rather large. It took 4 months to get in to see him. He did an ultrasound and didn't like what he saw, so sent me to Beth Israel in Boston for a needle biopsy.

That took another 4 months.

After going in to the city for the biopsy, over a long lunch hour no less, I returned to the office thinking that was that. I was 37. I had always been very healthy, no history of cancer at all in my family. Then within another hour I got a call from the surgeon- you have extensive papillary cancer and need to have surgery to remove your thyroid (and a few lymph nodes) within the next two weeks. Whoah! As a single mother, my first thoughts were of my son- am I going to live to raise him?

I can go on and on about the treatment, and the testing, etc is still ongoing for me, as my doctor likes to say I had a "nasty tumor." The worst parts were going off the meds, because I am a professor; I do a lot of public speaking and consulting too, so to lose my mental acuity for a month or so meant I couldn't do my job very well. That's hard, but even worse is the diet. I just finished my fourth year on it for testing purposes, and despite all the great recipes, it's torture for me. I normally eat a lot of dairy, seafood, soy, etc and of course its all verboten. At least each year I lose a few pounds out of the deal :)

As a professor with a doctorate in adult development, I know all the theories about personal development, life coaching, etc, and after the whole ordeal, I have to say I feel blessed. Everyone gets intellectually that life is short, but few of us get it emotionally with enough time to make life changes. They are diagnosed and soon gone. So for me it's been an opportunity to change habits and alter expectations, and I am deeply grateful for the lesson, and for life.

My friend had recently gone to an endocrinologist about a nodule on her neck, and was telling me about the experience, and how glad she was that it didn't turn out to be anything serious. Curious, I put my fingers on my own throat, and felt a little bump. Huh. Maybe it was just my voicebox. How often do you really feel your own neck anyway?

It was November, and I was flying home for the holidays in a few weeks. My mom was being treated for breast cancer. She turned out to be doing worse than I thought. I took additional time off work to help care for her. She died a few weeks after New Year's. In the days following her death, I would lie in bed and try to sleep, but I could feel that lump pressing down on my throat. I thought it was just my suppressing tears - you know, that soreness you feel when you are holding back crying.

A week or two went by before I told my father that I thought I should go to the doctor. I didn't think anything would really be wrong - I mean, how likely is it that a 24-year old would get a serious diagnosis three weeks after her mom had died? The universe doesn't work that way. Well, apparently it does. I got my "suspicious for papillary thyroid cancer" diagnosis, and was fortunate enough to be whisked into surgery a few days later, with radioactive iodine treatment following a few weeks thereafter.

It was a shocking experience - two enormous life events happening in such quick succession - and it taught me that there is no such thing as a "well-timed" life. Things happen. They can happen to anyone. I'm not invicible, I'm not "one of the lucky ones". The people who have cancer in this world did not bring it on themselves, they did not just get it "when they were older". There's no such thing as being immune to cancer.

I was so lucky my friend told me about her nodule. I had never even considered thyroid cancer as a concept until I got it. Building awareness is so important. On a day-to-day basis, it doesn't have to be a big, splashy event, or a ribbon, or a tattoo (although those things all do help). It's telling people you care about that, "By the way, I had this lump on my neck, and it felt like this" in 2 minutes. Those 2 minutes could save their life.