Post Surgery Updates!!

It is hard for me to believe that almost three weeks have gone by since I had my surgery.  Here are some long over-due updates… 

Surgery

The surgery went very went, aside from the fact that it was longer than expected.  Thyroidectomys normally take 3 hours but mine pushed over 4 hours.  This was due to the fact that my thyroid was tightly adhered to my trachea (windpipe), necessitating that the Surgeon literally scrape it off!  He said it almost looked like the two were growing together and he had to verify via X-ray during my post-op recovery that my trachea was not perforated.  Praise God it wasn’t! 

Pathology Report

The Wednesday following my surgery, the Surgeon, Dr. T, called to tell me that the pathology report had come back saying that while the 9 mm nodule had indeed been cancerous, it had been contained!  It had not spread and that I was, that I AM, CANCER FREE!  Thank you God, no additional treatments should be necessary!!

While on the phone, the Surgeon said, “I guess I did a good job didn’t I?”  I smiled and shifted the phone in my hand.

 “Yes Dr. T you did and I thank you so much for your skill and care.  But you really have no idea how many people were praying for you!  I knew that my life was ultimately in God’s hands and we were praying that God would have His hands over your own to give you the wisdom and skill you needed to deal with whatever you encountered.  So I am thankful to God for the care and skill He gave me through you.  Thank you for all you have done for me” I finished.  I just couldn’t let the Surgeon claim all the glory.    God had been so kind and faithful and regardless of what the Surgeon’s religious views were he needed to know that.   

Telling my parents that I was cancer-free was more emotional than I thought it would be.  It was as if I could visibly see a burden lift from their shoulders and I know their hearts.  

Recovery

The recovery has gone better than I expected.  I almost feel like I can visibly watch my incision shrink in size as each day passes.  (Sorry, no day by day progress pictures….you will thank me… I am sparing you!).    A week after the surgery, Dr. T told me that I could remove the Durma-bond glue that was holding the incision together (fancy that….no stitches!).  Now all I have is a little 2 inch line with some red around it.  It sort of looks like a scratch from a thorn bush.  Amazing!  My energy levels have been a little up and down but over all they have been better than they were prior to surgery.  The other great thing is that my sleep apnea is GONE!  Hmm, perhaps that tightly adhering thyroid had something to do with it…? (Actually, the scientific literature does say that there is a high number of people who have sleep apnea who also have thyroid disorders and vs versa.  I read all that after the surgery!).   

  I can’t begin to tell you how overwhelmed I have been by the multitude of kindnesses that so many friends, acquaintances even, and family members have shown me!!!  If I didn’t believe in grace or if I thought that we should each get what we deserve I  would say that I truly have not deserved the kindnesses in the form of flowers, kind words, notes,  text messages, prayers, food etc that many people have showered on my family and I.  But as it is, I am a firm believer in God’s grace, and that is the only reason I can account for all these displays of kindness.  Of course I don’t deserve them, but I am thankful God sent them in spite of me. 

Thank you to all who prayed and loved on me and my family.  Your prayers have by far, been the most cherished expressions of kindness.   I am so richly blessed!!!

Next…

I plan on continuing to take it slow for a few more weeks yet. After all, experience has taught me that there is no point in trying to play Super Woman!  And yet as I continue to take it easy, I have started the job search.   I am asking God that while He gave me a distinct grace in the unique season of waiting for surgery that He will give me another washing of grace I need to start and persevere in this next season of life, whatever that looks like.  I have confidence that He will.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Heart of the Matter

"It is not our lack of strength that prevents us from enjoying God's blessings, or stops us worshiping God whole-heartedly; it is our lack of faith in His strength.  When we rely on ourselves, and base our walk with God on our own calculations instead of His promises, we find ourselves making decisions like men of Judah" (in Judges 1:19).

"Does this describe you  in any way at this moment?  What would promise-trusting obedience look like for you?"

~ Excerpt from Explore Biblestudy guide.  Oct- Dec 2013.  Day 2.

My Cup Runneth Over

I almost don’t know where to begin.  Components of this blog post have been half-crafted, set aside, and rearranged countless times in my mind these last six months.  I suppose God wanted me to wait so I could better see and more fully share what He has done and how He has been at work.  There is a lot to tells so I will leave out some of the details and flourishes I would otherwise include (even at that, this is going to be a long post!). 

For years I have struggled with fatigue.  When I say for years   I am talking about 10 years.  And when I say fatigue, I mean mind-numbing, cannot function, almost unsafe to drive, utterly pressing exhaustion.  I mean the kind of tired that makes simple acts of life very difficult.  There were other problems too.  They crept in so slowly that I thought they were just part of what made me uniquely me.  They became my “normal.  It was things like gut discomfort and bloating, intense sugar cravings and hypoglycemia, endocrine irregularities and persistent acne and rosacea.  Weight gain, anxiety issues and strange heart palpitations…some fast, others scarily slow.  There was yellow-orange tinted skin on my hands and feet too.  Amassed in one long list, it appears obvious that something was wrong but as I said, all these things occurred slowly, over time, sometimes with varying dominance of one over the other, some seeming to get better for a time.  For six years I sensed something was “not right” and kept going to the Dr. However, it wasn’t until I was involved in the necessary classes for my nutrition degree and when the symptoms exponentially intensified that I that I became convinced that something was terribly wrong. 

Just a year ago, I started doing my own research and created my list of symptoms, taking them to my Primary Care Physician (PCP).  She unfortunately took me on a bit of a go-around and then refused to even look at the list I clutched in my hands or listen to the story my shaky voice tried to tell.   I found little consideration or time or empathy from her.  So I decided to find a new Dr. (a scary task in and of itself).  In God’s kindness I found one and one who listened well.  A Dr. who empathized.  She did some more comprehensive tests and referred me to a Specialist (Endocrinologist) when she said “red flags.” 

I walked out of my first appointment with the Endocrinologist with both a diagnosis and a mixed bag of emotions.  His intense personality had listened eagerly to my list of concerns.  He heard me and then married what he heard to my lab values and ultrasound results.  “It’s obvious,” he had said.  “You undoubtedly have hypothyroidism caused by the autoimmune disorder Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.”  This diagnosis itself was not a shock since all of my personal research had convinced me that this was what I had but the fact that I was finally heard and diagnosed was a strange feeling.  It felt good to have a name to it, to know I wasn’t just crazy.    I was immediately put on thyroid medication to compensate for the increasingly dysfunctional thyroid tissue that my immune system was attaching and killing. 

Fast-forward three months and there I sat, once again in the Endocrinologist's office, hearing yet another diagnosis—papillary thyroid cancer.  The initial ultrasound of my thyroid had revealed an impalpable 9mm nodule in the right lobe of my thyroid gland with spots of calcification in it.  This partially calcified nodule along with my young age triggered red flags to my Endocrinologist who did a biopsy as “insurance.”  Nothing about the biopsy had frightened me except the needles with which they had pierced my neck.  Non-cancerous nodules are very common in Hashimoto’s patients so I hadn’t been concerned that this really would be cancerous.  It was to my great surprise that I sat there in the Dr.’s office with that big, ugly, smudgy black word of cancer now linked to my name forever. 

There is lots of good news in this story.  Part of that good news is that papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) isn’t the aggressive kind and is not known for being fatal.  The first line of treatment for a person like me who has PTC is a complete thyroidectomy (a complete removal of the thyroid gland).  The other part of the good news is that they can do a one-time radio-active iodine treatment if they find the cancer has spread to the tissue bed in my neck.  They won’t know if I will need this until after full pathology report is run after surgery. 

So that is why I’ve had a longer summer vacation than I expected to have with no discussion about an aggressive job search.  I’ve been a "lady in waiting" for her surgery date.  And I now finally have it—it’s today.  Yes, today, October 7^th, I am having surgery to remove my little inflamed and cancerous thyroid.

There are other good parts to this story as well.  God has been at work.  For years, through the shadow and difficultly of this health condition, God has pushed me towards Himself.  If I hadn’t come to the end of my rope countless times, I might not (indeed I know I would not) have known that God was there at the end of the rope every time.  He had been there all along, and I had needed Him all along, not in just the moments when I had felt desperate.   I also can look back and thank God for His timing.  Admittedly at first, I was a little resentful that the discovery of my condition came after both school and my dietetic internship.  During those years (and especially within this last year) I was starting to become a bit unraveled.  In many ways, while I was gradually getting spiritually stronger, I felt physically weaker and more vulnerable.

 I inwardly moaned to myself, “If I had only known what was wrong (and had not thought I was going crazy) and had been under effect treatment before school or at least before my internship then perhaps things would have been much different.”  Things would have been better   These sorts of “perhaps, if-only, and what if” thoughts are dangerous and teeters one the precipice of spiritual rebellion.  It took a while and I had to do some grieving, but I came to the point where I acknowledged and believed that had God wanted things to be different, He would have made them so.  And the fact that He didn’t make things difference didn’t meant that He was not good.  It is one thing to recognize God’s sovereignty and it is an additional step to state, trust and treasure the fact that He is good in each exercise of His sovereignty even when it is vastly different or directly opposed to what we want or think we need. 

This past summer has given me the chance to heal from a lot of bruised places in my soul and body.  As I wait, God has re-built and refreshed me on many levels.  It has been a time that God has reinforced His amazing, unmerited, extravagant love for me. 

There was on day in particular  last month that I sat on the couch almost sobbing while my sister stared at me wide-eyed (“oh now, what has possessed Cathryn again?!).  “I have been (sniff)…just…(wipe the eyes)… devastated with blessings today” I wailed happily! 

 Truly I can say with the Psalmist, “…my cup runneth over!”

 I can’t even begin to predict what is in store for me in the months ahead (physically, job-wise etc).  Likely it will be full of both bumps and blessings that I couldn’t have expected or anticipated.  And that is ok.  I have learned that living the “victorious Christian life” often looks more life humble, desperate brokenness than personal, heroic, eventually-overcoming strength.    No matter how many valleys of the shadow of death He calls me into and regardless of how many times I break apart, I am confident that He Himself and all of His redeeming grace goes before, with and behind me. 

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever.” Psalm 23: 6

“Come magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.” Psalm 34:3. 

(Belated) Heart of the Matter Monday: Bravery & Faith

"It is hard to be truly brave without faith in God.  The kind of bravery that does not arise out of faith in God is adventurism or macho heroism, or plain cruelty.  It will be rooted in insecurity, or a desperation to prove oneself, or hopelessness. Only faith-based bravery will keep people from selfishness and thoughtfulness on the one hand, and cowardice and ineffectiveness on the other.

How we choose to live show whether we really trust God:
-What risks do you take because you trust God?
- Are there times you are brave out of a desires to prove yourself?
- Are there times you are ineffective or risk-averse out of a desire to protect yourself?
-What would you do differently in those moments if you had a faith-fueled bravery?"

~ Excerpt from Explore. Oct -Dec 2013 edition. Day 1.