It’s been said that ignorance is bliss.  This has certainly proved true in my life, and the evidence is staring back at me in old photographs of myself.  Below my smile, beneath my then unlined neck, cancer was lurking – a tumor concealed, undetected, yet steadily growing.  What I was ignorant of would later come crashing into reality at the most inopportune time.

Almost everyone has a cancer story or knows someone who has a cancer story. 

This is mine.

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In January 2013, I was a bride of all of six months.  I was 35 years old and adjusting to a new home in a new city, a new job, a new last name, and new roles as a wife and stepmom.  Or rather, trying to adjust.  To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement.  Even little things were exhausting, like dealing with an extremely stubborn cold.  The common cold is, well, common, but the cold I had that winter was uncommonly persistent.  It left me with swollen lymph nodes and a desire never to get sick again. 

Fast forward a few months.  My lymph nodes were still swollen.  I thought that was strange but wrote it off as prolonged effects of the cold.

A Lingering Lump

Fast forward a few more months.  I had a routine doctor’s appointment with my gynecologist, and I told her my husband and I were ready to try for a baby.  We discussed this at length, and as she was preparing to leave the room, almost as an afterthought, I mentioned the lingering lump on my neck.  She looked at it, felt it, and told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t even think about getting pregnant until we got it looked at.  I can still hear the gravity in her voice. 

What followed next is a blur.  I had so many doctor’s appointments and procedures that I had to start a binder to keep it all straight.  Bloodwork, CT scans, ultrasounds, follow ups with the doctor – it was a rapid succession of diagnostic procedures and information.  The hospital became my home away from home that summer.  I knew the floor plan by heart!  I was on a first-name basis with my nurse in my doctor’s office.   It was a lot, and it all led to the stunning revelation of what had been there all along but what I had been blissfully ignorant of.

Cancer Concealed

In July 2013, within just days of my one-year wedding anniversary, I was diagnosed with metastatic papillary thyroid cancer.  I was stage T3 N1 B since the cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes.  What I had so carelessly disregarded as swollen lymph nodes from a cold was actually a tumor sitting on top of my thyroid gland, a slow-growing tumor that had been steadily increasing over the years.  While I was going to work every day, when I met my husband and stepson, even on our wedding day, cancer was there – we just didn’t know it yet. 

My husband was the one who broke it to me.  The final diagnostic procedure was an outpatient surgical biopsy, and I remember it like it was yesterday.  For weeks, I thought everything was much ado about nothing, that there would surely be some easy explanation for whatever was in my neck.  I felt fine!  I had no other symptoms.  And quite frankly, I didn’t want to deal with it anymore.  I just wanted it all to be over, and I wanted to enjoy what was left of the summer.  It took lying on a hospital bed and being prepped for surgery to finally get my attention, to acknowledge that maybe there could be something to this after all. 

Eventually, I was wheeled away – to my first surgery ever, but not the last.  The surgeon cut a small incision in my neck and removed a lymph node that was sent to pathology for testing.  When I awoke in the recovery room, my husband told me the result: cancer. 

A Jarring Revelation

I was shocked.  I bolted up right away; the anesthesia had already worn off because the surgery was so short.  With my mouth agape, I struggled to take in what he was telling me.  Surely it would have been something else, something minor – anything but this.  This is what happens to other people, never what you expect to have to deal with yourself.

I had the same reaction earlier that year when my sister called to tell me she had cancer, the same cancer I was now diagnosed with.  I remember being so utterly shocked when she told me her news, so completely blind-sided.  It was a lot to digest, and now here I was having to digest it all over again.  What are the chances we would both be diagnosed with the exact same cancer within a few months of each other? 

But we were.  It was a reality we were forced to accept, and the quicker we could do so, the quicker we could begin dealing with it.  My sister was by then treated and doing very well.  To this day, she has had no relapses.  Walking with her through her process helped me when I went through mine, once the shock wore off.

Sadness Sets In

Besides feeling shocked, I remember feeling sad – sad for my mom that she had another sick daughter, and sad for my husband.  He had barely gotten settled in the waiting room after going for a quick bite to eat before the surgeon came looking for him after the biopsy.  He told me how serious the surgeon was when he told him, and now here he was having to tell me, having to say “cancer” to his wife. 

I felt bad that he was the one who had to do that, that he was so quickly having to live out his vow of “in sickness and in health.”  But he did, faithfully.  Throughout that summer and everything that came after, he was there for me.  And I believe we’re stronger now for having faced cancer together.

Cancer.  The one word you never want to hear.  And for me, especially not at that time in my life.  I was about to celebrate my first wedding anniversary and, hopefully, about to become pregnant.  Cancer is never convenient.  We did celebrate our anniversary, but we had to put pregnancy on hold – for longer than we thought. 

My New Normal

The way I processed it all was to ask questions, lots of questions.  I did my own research, wrote down questions in advance, and took my binder to every appointment.  I processed it step by step, with each appointment, with each new piece of information. 

What I learned is that papillary thyroid cancer is a very slow-growing, non-aggressive cancer.  It’s typically not treated with chemotherapy, and its patients usually have a good prognosis.  It is treatable. 

Treatable.  That was the word I clung to once I digested the word “cancer.”  As I adjusted to my new normal, a game plan presented itself, a course of action to tackle this unexpected and unwelcome development.  I’ll save my treatment for another blog post because it was filled with its own challenges – stops and starts, highs and lows, a meandering journey that continues.

I had just wanted it all to be over, but it was far from over. 

It was just getting started.