During a routine physical exam in April 2004, my doctor noticed that I had an enlarged thyroid. He sent me to get a sonogram to get a better look and a few days later it showed two nodules or growths; one on each side of my thyroid gland. One was 1.2cm, the other just over twice that size.
I was then scheduled for a biopsy to check for cancerous cells and of course, the “c” word scared the heck out of me!
The results of the biopsy were inconclusive; the pathologist called them “suspicious.” I called my doctor and he said they could be benign follicular nodules or malignant tumors. To be safe, he recommended surgery to remove the growths and part, or possibly all, of my thyroid gland. He said that the only way to find out for sure if they were cancerous was to perform a tissue biopsy after removal.
“But don’t you worry,” my doctor said, “if they are malignant, surgically removing them will 100% cure the thyroid cancer. And if they turn out to be benign, then it’s no big deal. We’ll put you on synthetic hormone replacement medicine for the rest of your life, and you’ll be just fine.”
He gave me the name of a surgeon and urged me to schedule surgery to remove my thyroid. I was afraid. The doctor is always right, isn’t he? Nobody wants to mess around when he spouts words like “malignant” or “cancer.” I did as I was told and got on the phone right away and scheduled surgery.
But I Wasn’t Ready to Cut Out My Thyroid on a Hunch
Fortunately a small, but saner part of my mind totally balked at the willy-nilly chopping out of my God-given thyroid gland, on the unsubstantiated hunch that it may have malignant tumors.