Insides Revealed

8 weeks. That's how long since my last appointment. Which feel more and more like a blur. As does the June 18th date of my surgery. And now, another date to mark, October 9th, nearly 4 months since my surgery. Last Wednesday, before my 3:45 appointment with my Endocrinologist, I had ironically received a notification of my LabCorp blood-work to my phone just 15 minutes prior. Normally, I pop open the results ASAP as my curiosity usually gets the best of me in wanting to know where my levels are. I get more and more adept at reading my labs to understand the new number I have to check just as a Diabetic might of insulin levels. Gratefully, I don't have to check my numbers that frequently, but nevertheless, the monitoring game continues. But this time, I decided to just wait and let me doctor do their informing. I left a couple conference calls right before my appointment and shot up to the 6th floor of the medical building at the hospital campus where my doctor's office ...

After a whirlwind trip to Detroit for the loss of Emily's Uncle Bo, we returned on 7/29, went home, grabbed some lab orders, and I was out the door to get to a 4 o'clock LabCorp appointment for blood draw. This was "the check" to read all Thyroid levels, PTH, TSH, Calcium, Thyroglobulin and more to see if radioactive iodine therapy was going to be prescribed. The good news is, no, I do not have to have radioactive iodine! Wahoo! And really there is no "bad news," just information and next steps. One of the cancer marker tests is for Thyroglobulin (Tg)- the protein synthesized by Thyroid cells. Since I have no Thyroid, I have very few Thyroid cells (since they can't remove everything) and if both my Tg levels and Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels are low, that's a good indicator there is no active cancer. As the doctor said, there is no guarantee of anything at anytime and he'll be following me for life basically. So, we keep checking a...