Follow up appointments: Tuesday 9/20/16

I'm a few days late to the update, but I've been busy with school work, cooking, and continuing to attempt to catch up with Game of Thrones.

On Tuesday morning, my mom and I went to my follow up appt with the ENT who did my surgery. He removed my SteriStrips and stitches. We discussed "wound" care and I have to clean it twice a day with hydrogen peroxide to break up the scabs and follow with Bactroban (antibiotic ointment). Ever since taking a wound care class, I've had a hard time even opening that hydrogen peroxide bottle, but I'm following doctor's orders. Also at the appt, we discussed the results of my pathology report. He told me that he actually did remove 12 lymph nodes during surgery (even though I swear he told me none had to be removed) and all of them were directly posterior to my thyroid. The pathology report came back with only 1/12 as being malignant and it was completely contained within that node. I did not have any cancer in the blood supply to the thyroid and the 4 cm nodule was almost completely malignant, but it was completely contained and found no where else in the thyroid. This is good since it means that I'm in the low-risk category for recurrence. He informed me that I will still have to go through the radioactive iodine treatment because of the size of the tumor, but the chances of my cancer coming back after that are very extremely slim. I have a follow up with him again next week to talk about scar management and so he can see how my scar is healing up after doing my wound care for a week. Taking the SteriStrips off hurt worse than the actual removal of the stitches.

After going to the ENT, my mom and I headed to my school and saw my school director and a few of the students in the class below me. They signed a card for me and my little (mentee) gave it to me. It was so sweet of them and was great to see some familiar smiling faces!

My mom and I then had lunch and headed to the endocrinologist appointment. The endo discussed the process for the RAI, the low-iodine diet, my blood work, and post-RAI expectations. He takes a very laid-back approach to the whole thing (which is kinda a relief). He told me that as long as I don't eat a lot of seafood or sea products like nori (which I don't), soy (which I stopped eating in July after I found out about my enlarged thyroid), or a lot of processed foods (which I eat very minimally), he said that I would be fine eating low-iodine for one week instead of two. He scheduled me to take the RAI pill on Sept 30 and I will need to stay about 6ft distance from people for 3 days. I will not be able to sleep in the same bed as my husband for 7 days and 21 days for sleeping in the same bed as HG. HG will have a much harder time with this than I will for sure! Just after 3 days of me sleeping in a separate room/bed than him after surgery, he was coming to find me at 2am. :-/  If anyone has any suggestions on how to keep him out of whatever bed I'm sleeping in, that would be helpful (he will already be sleeping with my husband). 

Anyway, I will have blood work done on Sept 28th to check my thyroid levels and if they are ideal for RAI, I will continue with my scheduled appt on the 30th. If not, I will take the RAI pill at the beginning of the following week on Oct 3rd. I have a full body scan scheduled for Oct 11th (HG's birthday). I don't know if they give me the results right after, or if I have to wait to hear if I have cancer elsewhere or if the RAI took care of any residual cancer cells. My hope is that I will be cancer-free, whether I hear the news that day or another day. I will then have another scan done in a year to determine if I remain cancer-free. The endocrinologist also said that there have been updates with the amount of time allowed for getting pregnant after RAI. They used to say 2yrs is ideal, but they are now saying 6mos is enough time and is safe. I do not even want to think about it until my second scan a year from now is over, but at least we don't have to wait 2 yrs as anticipated before. :-) He also sent me for blood work to check my calcium levels and turns out they were high. So he had me stop my Rocaltrol/Calcitrol and just continue with my 1,000mg of TUMS 3x/day. This is good news because it means that my parathyroids have started kicking in and doing their job!

All in all, I feel that the appointments went well. My scar isn't pretty right now, but it's definitely healing. 

Tuesday - day of stitches removal













Wednesday - day 2













Thursday - day 3












I spent today in the kitchen prepping food for my low-iodine diet which I started today (yes I still have energy surprisingly and haven't felt fatigued like I hear will happen at some point before RAI). I made banana bread, spaghetti sauce, cashew milk, poppy seed dressing, and a salad (which I ate for lunch). I had the spaghetti sauce for dinner over some pasta with a side salad and the sauce was really good! Tomorrow, I'm going to pull up the low-iodine cookbook and see about making some potato salads they have in there. The hardest part about this diet is that I can't eat out at all, all processed and canned foods are out (black olives are a no-no since they come from a can...waaaahhhhhh!), and no dairy products can be consumed. I can eat eggs, but only the whites. I have to only used non-iodized salt (I'm upset about this because I LOVE my pink Himalayan sea salt).  I will have to cook my own beans, which isn't a bad thing, but I've just never really been successful at making them. They always turn out not quite done (even after cooking them for ungodly amounts of time in the crock pot). Oh well...maybe I'll finally be able to conquer the one thing that doesn't go well for me in the kitchen.

That's all for now. Until next post...