Hi Everybody,
I'm a newbie here. I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer that had spread to 5 regional lymph nodes back in Nov 2024. When I was diagnosed, they initially thought it was worse than it turned out to be because a ton of lymph nodes were lit up on pet scan (they took nearly 20 lymph nodes that they *thought* were cancer, and only one of them turned out to be cancer--the rest were just inflamed). They did a full thyroidectomy and neck dissection. I had a 6 month ultrasound check-up with the surgeon who said everything looked great.
Yesterday, I had my follow-up with my endocrinologist who said he was concerned because a post-surgical pet showed another lymph node lit up near the same area. He did a biopsy and I'm waiting for the results.
He's planning on doing RAI either way. He said if it's malignant, first he'll treat it with the RAI (and yes, I'll be posting questions about that), then do a pet to see if it's ok. If not, then another surgery. Sigh.
Needless to say, it's VERY stressful. First, why wouldn't the surgeon--who I saw a few months ago--mention this? I'm hoping against hope that it turns out to be an inflammation. He said it takes roughly a week to get the biopsy results. Yesterday, I got something in my chart that detailed what he did during the biopsy and *his* post biopsy diagnosis, which was thyroid cancer.
Has any of you been through this--where it turned out a lymph node that wasn't taken out and is cancer? And what course of treatment did you do?
Thanks for any/all responses. :-)
