fan_eunice | (no subject)

Back from my first post-op where everything was certified a-okay. It's too soon to either evaluate my thyroid hormone levels for med adjustment, or to know if the changes in my voice are long term or temporary (and, honestly, I don't consider speaking at a lower register or being unable to raise the volume above normal speaking level to be particularly worrisome regardless, though if the latter remains true I'm going to start claiming CAPSLOCK as an assistive device). Anyway, I'm barely going to have a scar and all is healing well.

And then I went and freaked myself out unnecessarily over my patholgy report (which I ask for a copy of out of habit at this point). And I want to stress unnecessary as I talk this out for myself, because it makes me look silly. In fact I'm putting this under a cut from here

Anyhoo, so I'm looking at the summary part and the bit about the left lobe is all 'lalala, couple nodules' and a very firm 'No malignancy found'. Yay! And then there is the right lobe, which is like, pathology speak for 'a metric fuckton of nodules and do they even make cysts that large?' which is nothing we didn't know from the ultrasound and why they yanked the whole thing in the first place. Except this bit ends with 'No definitive malignancy found' Cue panic attack. Calm down enough to flip the page and read the detailed part, which is basically that there was a patch of cells which had some features of malignancy but not enough to classify it as such. From a practical standpoint this is essentially the same thing as a totally benign finding in this context. It's not cancer yet, and having been removed along with the rest of the thyroid, doesn't even have the potential to become cancer anymore.

And I can see why it wasn't brought up to me by anyone. Because, seriously, what would even be the point of telling someone they almost had cancer, particularly when it has zero relevance to...well, anything at all. I mean, if they hadn't skipped the needle biopsy part of this whole deal, that result would have ended in recommending removing the thyroid for just in case safesies...but, y'know, already did that, and already would have done that for the godawful mess, even sans dodgy cells, that right lobe was anyway. The fact that I had a totally unnecessary freak out over this information, even being able to parse that 'no cancer' was, in fact, an accurate description, just kinda proves the point that 'Hey, you almost had cancer' is not something I would go around telling patients if I was a doctor either.

Also, seriously, who on earth reads their own pathology reports in detail? Well, I do, but I'm aware I'm weird.

So that happened. And I still do NOT, and did not, have cancer. Just some funny looking wannabe cells, though not gonna lie, I am now doubly glad to have seen the back of my stupid thyroid. Have fun in the medical wastebin, loser (p.s. my breasts are laughing at you).