Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Where to go from here....

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So.....hey there.

Yeah, I know it's been awhile.

Sorry 'bout that. Its just that I have been waiting for the results of my full body scan. Ive been waiting for over a week now and I just got them in the mail. Apparently I'm an idiot for thinking that my doc would actually want to talk to me about the results. See, I called his office a couple of times last week thinking that he might want to talk about the scan results and whats gonna happen to me from this point forward. I figured since this is kind of the theoretical finish line to this whole thing, that maybe he would want to talk to me about it. The only callback I got was from his nurse telling me to stop calling (sort of). She said that if I had a question for the doctor that I needed to make an appointment, that the doctors don't do phone consultations. What I heard was "pay up, sucker!" I couldn't help but feel like I had suddenly hit some sort of unspoken phone call quota. That kind of pissed me off since he had explicitly told me that I could call if I had a quick question so that I wouldn't have to pay the $50 copay to talk to him for 5 minutes. I understand that he doesn't work for free, but again, this is sort of the end of this whole thing, right? Seems like he would want to actually talk.

Whatever.

They told me that they mailed the scan result which I got about a week later. According to the scan, things are as good as they can be I guess. The iodine only absorbed in "the thyroid bed" which was to be expected since thats where the cancer was known to be. There was no evidence of the cancer anywhere else so thats a good thing. As far as I know at this point, the cancer will continue to die off and the next issue to deal with is regulating my synthroid levels (synthetic thyroid hormone.) I'll let you know more as I find it out.

So, where do I go from here?

The short answer is....not very far. I say that because, while I have made a lot of progress in healing from the surgery and all of the crap that came along with it, (the recovery, the diet and radiation etc...) I still have a long way to go. I find that I still get tired easily, especially if I'm doing anything very active. Becky and I spent the weekend putting the living room back to normal and after moving some light furniture and folding some blankets, I was drained. (For those of you who don't know, my family had set up a little recovery area in the living room complete with a bed and tables so I wouldn't have to go up and down stairs after surgery.) I just don't have the stamina to do very much for very long. I know it will come back eventually, but right now I find I still tire fairly easily. Anyway, I'm getting better everyday, but I'm not back to 100%


Well, I have really enjoyed writing this blog, but I'm not really sure what to talk about without a semi-serious disease making my life difficult. I do have plans to lose a bunch of weight since my doc told me (again) that it would help me out. Now that I am finally getting some energy back i'll try harder to do that. It would be nice to not look like a manatee when i go to the pool at the gym... As far as other medical concerns go, I'm supposed to have a sleep study done soon. I'm told they do it at my house. Not sure how thats all gonna work out so, I'll let you know how that goes. Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your support and love. It really helped me get through a tough little stretch there.

I'm out.

3 comments:

  1. Much love to you, Nick! - Aunt Carol

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  2. Unfortunately, your endo's response is pretty typical. I only see my endo once or twice a year, max, and she only talks to me personally on the phone when things are bad. Otherwise I pretty much deal with her receptionist.

    I hope your adjustments to Synthroid go really well. :) Definitely make sure you keep up with the regular blood tests, and get on your doctor's butt if you don't feel right. When you find the right dose, you'll know.

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  3. I think the problem is that our cancers are the most important and worrying things in our lives but for the specialists they're just another relatively curable disease and we're just the latest in a long line of over-worried folk that they have to deal with.

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