The Big Day

Everyone's been so kind to call and email. You're all the best friends and family I could ever want!

Well last night was the my last meal for a while. I went out with Mom to the Blue Star Restaurant and ate a nice meal. We coincidently saw Liz briefly... hi Liz :). No eating today, surgery is late : 1:00 and we need to arrive at the hospital at 11:00.

I was reading all these blogs about people having no thyroid hormone after surgery and feeling 100 years old because of it so I fired off an email with a bunch of questions to my surgeon Dr. Book. He got back to me this morning with a detailed reply to my questions chiefly that I'd be given a prescription for a thyroid replacement hormone with a short half life immediately after surgery. This drug is quickly removed from the body so it's ideal in the time before radioactive iodine treatments which require "hungry" thyroid cancer cells to show up well on a scan. I was really impressed by his thorough and quick reply.

My Endocrinologist will be Dr David Book's wife Dr Lori Book. She'll get me setup with the radioactive iodine treatment and the thyroid hormone level tweaking. I called and got an appointment this morning and the scheduler said the earliest appointment was for 9/22!! I told her I was having surgery today and she put me on the cancellation call list. She think I should be able to get in much sooner.

I'm still not worried, let's GET IT DONE

Oh 1 more thing: mom and I went to a "genetic family councilor" appointment yesterday. The main take away that I got was that she said that "1st degree relatives" (something like that -- meaning a parent had thyroid cancer) should be extra careful because since in the Faith family it's been in multiple generations there might be a heritable element to it which isn't typical with Papillary Thyroid Cancer. So physical exams for everyone! I also read that there's a blood test for something called Thyroglobulin that can be an indication of thyroid cancer. Maybe they can screen using that blood test? Anyway, get a physical!