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.