For once, Meadowlark brought some good news!

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

For once, Meadowlark brought some good news! [And I wish I had the lungpower to sing like that.]

Late yesterday, I finally got my pathology report on the second biopsy (only five weeks late, but who's counting?). There are a lot of caveats to this, and there may still be big cause for concern in the short as well as the long term, but for the moment? Their assessment is that the tumor in my thyroid is BENIGN.

Now, as I said, a lot of caveats. Apparently, some of the samples were not sufficiently readable without sending them out for genetic testing — which we are not going to do, because 1) it's $10K for one test, cash on the barrelhead, and 2) it's not (only) mine to do with as I like (this is a difference in the way we regard what the colonial culture calls "genetic material," or DNA; ours is not ours alone, and the powers that be have already proven many times over that they cannot be trusted with it). Fortunately, the news was good enough that I didn't even have to waste a second on the decision-making process, because the samples that were readable apparently were sufficiently so to lead both pathologist and surgeon to assess it as benign.

Now I'm madder than hell at the first round of doctors, of course, but it's still all outweighed by an indescribable feeling of pure relief. If it were not for certain very specific idiosyncrasies, including size, I might think that they had literally mixed my results up with someone else's, because the difference, both in conclusion and in wording, is so very stark. But it seems that all it is is that the first round of "professionals" muffed it completely. In fact, one of the factors that was used the first time to jack my RADS score so high (what they use to determine the stage of this type of cancer)? According to this path, apparently does not even exist. So in the space of a little over two months, I've gone from being told that I have one of the kinds of thyroid cancer that doesn't have a great long-term outlook to not having it all.

The initial analysis said that the cell sample was cancerous, and there was a 60-75% that it was medullary, with the remaining 25-40% chance that it was Hürthle-cell. They're two different types, both considered "rare"; both have decent 1- to 2-year outlooks, but with some specific factors that apply to me, including age, not so great five years out (yes, I'm understating that last a bit). So . . . this is scary shit. Especially when you've been spending the last now-18 months of your life trying desperately to get a diagnosis as to what nearly killed you twice a year and a half ago.

But here's the deal: There are TWO types of Hürthle-cell tumors. One is metastatic and very nasty; the other is nearly always benign, and usually stays that way. [Yes, nearly, usually, etc., etc.; these are only some of the caveats I mentioned above.] They have determined that the tumor in my neck is the latter kind, benign. And it IS a tumor; this is not a goiter, nothing to do with ordinary (or even non-ordinary) thyroid dysfunction. But it is, they say, confined to the thyroid itself, one of the factors in determining which sort of tumor it is, and that's very good news. There are, of course, the two tumors on my liver still to be monitored (although this news tends to support the hemangioma theory, fortunately), and this one in my neck will also have to monitored regularly to ensure that it isn't growing or otherwise changing. But for the immediate term, it looks as though I can jettison one set of fears, the ones surrounding the possibility of an aggressively metastatic form of cancer growing in my throat. 

I'm also on two new meds for my asthma. The current working hypothesis is that what nearly killed me twice in 2017 were two near-fatal asthma attacks — asthma that I have had literally my entire life and undiagnosed for the whole of that time, and was triggered that day by that wood-treatment mist the crew was spraying. These attacks were special even by ordinary standards, because there is something up with either my esophagus or my trachea that is impinging on the left side of my chest (yup, you got it; right around the area of the heart). And this is the reason, apparently, that my coronary artery kept shutting down, even though I don't have angina and there is, we now know, nothing wrong with my heart, at least WRT the arteries being clear and functioning properly. And the asthma is why my blood pressure skyrocketed so badly (and continues to, periodically). It would also explain why I consistently wake up having stopped breathing, but do not have apnea. A little advice:  Don't listen to family, and don't listen to docs that aren't listening to you. I'm so angry about this; if I had known to PUSH on my breathing issues when I was young, all this could have been avoided, and a lifetime of unexplained illness, too.

Anyway, I'm now trying to adjust to the new maintenance med. I also have a rescue inhaler, which apparently I've needed like forever. It's albuterol, and I don't like the way it makes me feel speedy, but it's better than feeling like I'm dying, so I'll deal. I also will likely have some long-term follow-ups later this year on the thyroid stuff, and there are other tests I still need to have run on other body parts to ensure there's nothing else lurking. All a lot more $$, but we're hoping all of that can wait for a few months so I can, no pun intended, catch my breath from all this mishegas.

In the meantime, I still have to pay off the balances on those hospital bills: $30K, and it's getting really, really urgent. Everything I do is going to be geared toward that until they're gone. We need to make some good sales, steadily, if we're going to do this. On the current push, I've raised $217 toward that goal (and thank you to the two folks who made that possible). I've got a lot more work that I have to get done both on- and offline yet, too, and nothing left in reserve, so here are the links, because I have to bring in this full $30K somehow, and now:

• Wings's site, for sales, with lots of new items posted;
• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount);
• My Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds) (and if you subscribe today you won't be billed until June 1st for May);
• Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of animal and household stuff, the big one being the fly spray;
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. I've added two or three new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need.

I'm ecstatic to be able to forget, at least for now, about my thyroid (yes, there's still some swelling and so forth, but it's not nearly as noticeable as after the first botched biopsy). Now I have to work on the asthma/respiratory and autoimmune stuff. And most of all, I need to pay off these bills. That will go further than just about anything right now to allowing me to breathe again.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.