Quick and dirty.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

Quick and dirty, emphasis on dirty. [Also, please note up front: I am not asking for, and do not need, advice. My doctors are handling that.]

There is a 60-70% chance that I have medullary thyroid cancer. The remaining 30-40% seems to be that they cannot determine with specificity exactly what kind of cancer it is (there are four types of thyroid cancer, one with a subtype, and then of course, there's always lymphoma, which can also hit the thyroid.), because the cells from the biopsy were apparently something nobody could read with any confidence level, not the pathologists, not the doc, not the surgeon who'll be handling it, not anyone. [There are also two sizeable masses on different lobes of my liver, but those they don't think are cancerous. We all hope. We don't know what might be lurking beneath that, but the thyroid has to be handled first. Also, no, there's no family history, which is the usual with medullary. No one knows where it came from. As always, I have to be the outlier.]

Provided that I don't have to pay cash up front, this will all move very fast. They want me down at UNM probably next week; waiting to hear from the surgeon's office, but the referral's already been made. He may want another biopsy beforehand; he may just go in and take everything out. If I do have to pay upfront, well, everything comes to a screeching halt, at least until we find a way of raising the scratch. No, I have no idea how much it's going to cost, beyond "EXPENSIVE." I have to pay out that $1,600 for the path analysis tomorrow, on top of the several hundred I've already shelled out today for various things. The only sure thing, at this point, is that the mass does have to come out, and we have to hope there's been no spread over the nearly 16 months that this has been overlooked.

I'm not even going to ask for good vibes; I feel like everything's too far beyond that right now. I'm numb. I don't want to talk much about it; just the logistics are going to be a nightmare. I can't even let myself think about the money right now. Just so everyone knows where we are.



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