Clear ultrasound!!

It's only when you step off the rollercoaster and the carousel that you realise that your world is still a bit wobbly.

In the early stages of adjusting to cancer, you spend most of your time going from one appointment to the next, preparing for the next intervention and then suddenly, it's all over and done and you've just got the rest of your life to look forward to. Your treatment has given your world a structure since you first knew something wasn't right with your thyroid and now, that structure's gone.

You will get used to it.

I think it took me 2-3 years to NOT think about cancer every day. Now I'm nearly 13 years on. There are clusters of days when it doesn't even cross my mind.

Thank you so much for this. I was in a sense lucky that cancer was found during pathology but I had a feeling all along that’s what they would find. So it has been a total whirlwind of emotions I don’t even think I have fully processed that I had cancer yet, maybe that’s something that we never full process and just learn to live with.

 It’s just the unknown again, and I guess each day will get easier. I just feel like at the moment these last few months cancer has consumed my life with the thoughts of worry and what ifs all the time. 

thank you again! 

Focus on the positives @Dots2023 the US was clear, I wish mine had been.  However I totally get how you feel, it is so easy to feel better about things when you are being monitored, attending appointments etc, getting to talk to the specialists but you will feel better as time goes on I am sure, probably with a bit of panic at your next US until you get the results.  It takes time to process it all and you shouldn't rush yourself, it's a bit like a bereavement in a way (loss of your health) and you get over it or comes to terms with it in your own time. x

Thank you for this. I know I feel like I should be jumping for joy after having the clear US but I feel odd, I can’t really explain how I feel. I guess it’s coming to terms with it all and continuing with life and my new normal. I am such a worrier about health anyway so I think all of this has really played on me, maybe more then it should have. 
I know that I will be on high alert to any changes now in my body etc, I just have to no let it rule my life like it has been. 
yes the next US I think is going to be a anxious time your right there. 
that is such a good way of looking at it in terms of bereavement I haven’t thought it about like that before. It still bugs me when they say “it the good cancer” to me it’s like they are belittling what we are going through and it makes it even harder to deal with I feel because you feel like you shouldn’t be riddled with worry and anxiety or anger and we should just pull up our socks and carry on which isn’t so easy for us to do. sorry your US wasn’t clear I hope your doing okay?  X

I think when they say it is the good cancer they are trying to help more than diminish the seriouness of it and are trying to reassure us that it is treatable and not many people die from it, however some do.  It also does make you think that you shouldn't complain, but it is still cancer and none of us know for sure that we are going to be cured as such, so in my mind it is just as scary.  

A few years back there was a move to NOT call some of the smaller and least dangerous thyroid lumps by the C-word - even though that's what they were.

The idea (I think) was that CANCER was such an emotive word that the ones that were very small, very simple, and highly unlikely to ever come back would be referred to as 'neoplasms' (a fancy doctor word for a cancer - go figure)..

I think the doctors thought we'd love it but the reverse soon turned out to be typical.

People started to realise that there are some advantages in cancer being called cancer. For example, much better to tell HR you need time off for cancer treatment than 'getting my neoplasm fixed'. Undoubtedly some people benefit from their lumps being classified as cancers. We've had people get critical illness payouts on quite tiny and very low risk lumps because they were called cancers. Whilst I would never endorse playing the so-called 'cancer card', there are times when it can come in handy. 

So whilst I absolutely agree that many people are offended by the very concept of a 'good cancer' or 'the one you'd want to get if you had to have cancer', I think that Petal is right that the doctors are trying to reassure us that we shouldn't worry too much. The problem is, when somebody just sliced open your neck and removed a vital organ, we're not always in the right mood to put things in perspective. 

It must be a nightmare getting the balance right @barbaral between not panicking a patient with the diagnosis but also not underestimating the seriousness of the disease, after all it is cancer when all said and done.  The operation isn't nice and if you need neck dissection as well it takes longer for everything to heal and then the risks involved during the operation are very real as well.  However the survival rates are very good, so I think what they are trying to say whether badly put or not is that if you are going to get cancer this is the easiest one to treat and the best outcome to be expected.  

Yes I agree with that totally. Something that we all deal with differently. X

Yes that makes perfect sense and I agree with you both on the logic behind the wording they use. And in a sense lucky that I had that rather then anything more evasive. But yes dealing with aftermath of surgery and those words seems like a hard one to digest, but something that myself and I’m sure others who are or have felt the same will come to deal with. X