The Best Bad News

... that's how Phil put it.  And that really is what it was.

I have follicular thyroid cancer.
One of the nodules came back as cancer.  Naomi, I believe.  And I am pretty sure the other one came back as benign.

It is Minimally Invasive Follicular Carcinoma.  The edges were well defined.  It was completely encapsulated.  It was small.  That all means that the likelihood that it would have spread is very small.  All the lymph nodes they took and tested came back normal.

The surgeon had me do a chest x-ray to check for any obvious spreading to the lungs and we already heard back that it was normal.

The best bad news.

It wasn't the news we were hoping to hear.  I definitely wanted to hear benign.  It usually isn't good when a doctor who previously recommended not having surgery says to you, "You made a good decision having the surgery."  Whatevs.

But I am also kind of relieved because the news definitely could have been worse.  It could have been a more aggressive type of cancer.  The tumor could have been bigger.  Both nodules could have been malignant.  It could have spread all into my thyroid.  None of those things are true.

So like Phil said... it is the best bad news we could have gotten.  And for that we are grateful.

It is weird to be sad and grateful all at the same time.

{The orchid Logan and Rikkie brought me before my surgery.  It is beautiful and I am hoping I don't kill it.}

So that is that.  I will update more later.  I don't need this post to reach novella lengths.  And I will do my best to not have this entire blog be solely devoted to my thyroid (or lack thereof I suppose).  But seeing how this will be one of my primary activites for 2012, it will probably make a few appearance.  My mother has recently been amused/horrified by my dark sense of humor, so hopefully it will at least be amusing.  Even if it isn't, that's life I guess.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I CAN'T STAND people who gloss over the messy things in life so they appear to be perfect.  I mean really... they aren't fooling anyone.  Whoa tanget.

I digress.   Can you tell this post was written in two sittings?