This is not my personal blog, but I would like to share part of my own personal story to give some background as to why this project is really important to me.
I should say this is just one of the myriad reasons presence* is so important. I myself am probably the least of my concerns. Being an INFJ, I am a master of empathy, and I've always found my concern for my friends and loved ones to be much higher than my concern for myself.
Until now. Now the worrying has begun to consume me, and admittedly, it's difficult to turn it off.
Back in April, I saw a new endocrinologist at Cleveland Clinic. She found several tumors in my thyroid, and scheduled an ultrasound for me. The ultrasound was essentially so that she could get a better look at what was happening - how big the tumors were, what their boundaries were like, whether they were "hot" or "cold." After she read the ultrasound, she told me that she didn't like the appearance of several particularly large tumors, or the way the boundaries appeared. She scheduled a biopsy for me, which will take place this Thursday. I was not a stranger to ultrasounds, radioactive scans, and other diagnostic tests, but I'd never had a doctor who was this concerned with my situation. It is an old battle, with new implications.
For the first time, I'm scared. I have had nodules and tumors in my thyroid before - four times, to be exact. Although my white blood cell counts were astronomically high, and my red blood cell counts were nearly non-existent, somehow my body killed everything in my thyroid off... including my thyroid itself. Now, partially because of my doctor's aggressive stance, I'm scared.
The first time I was diagnosed with the tumors, I was in my first year of law school. It was so difficult, and absolutely everything in my life was adversely affected by how sick I was. After four medical leaves, and six years, I graduated from law school. I wasn't sure what I would do with my J.D., because it didn't seem like I would ever be healthy enough to practice law, much less even pass the bar exam. (I now know through my research that even ADA accommodations are available to people like I am!) There is a future for me out of this, and I'll figure it out in time... at any rate...
Thyroid cancer is rare, and when it occurs, it is very treatable, in most cases. I shouldn't be worried. Fueling the anxiety was my antibody level, which was 557. (It's supposed to be a negative number, according to the lab report.) It's another reason I worry.
I think my health situation in general has been the largest contribution to my worries. I find it difficult to muster the strength to get out of bed in the morning. Often I am weak and have to take time to gather myself. There are times I've been so dizzy I have fallen. There are other times when random muscles just refuse to work. Lately, I've been struggling to take in 1000 calories a day. My neck is often swollen, and it is difficult to breathe, especially when my throat is sore.
I was telling a dear friend, whose father is one of the people this project is dedicated to, about the biopsies I'm having. I confessed to him something I've never told anyone - I had always had the attitude that if cancer is going to take my life, I don't want to know. If I'm going to die, I don't want to live the rest of my life out suffering. What God wants from me, I can accept - now, or later. I told him I'm not scared - what happens, happens. He questioned how I could be afraid of dying, yet not want to do anything to prevent it. He told me, "You're scared to fly in an airplane because you're afraid you'll die, but you won't do anything to make sure you don't die of cancer? That makes no sense." I haven't really talked about the biopsies with anyone else, not even my parents, until now. I have never expressed these feelings to anyone else, until now.
So I guess I'm boarding my airplane.
I woke up from a nap this afternoon to an email about a colleague who was diagnosed with cancer this weekend; she was admitted directly to Hospice. Two days ago, the top news item in my Flashline (school network portal) was that a research librarian at KSU passed away from cancer. One of my best friends at school lost her mother to ovarian cancer on Tuesday. On Sunday, I played a mass to remember the mother of my composer friend, John Pasternak, who died of breast cancer last year. A friend lost an uncle to cancer last night. Another friend lost her grandmother to cancer this weekend. Two famous people died of cancer in the past 24 hours. I could keep going, but I shouldn't have to.
I'm scared, but I'm not afraid to fight this... anymore. Part of that battle, however, is not just my personal fight, but my contribution to the fight against all cancers everywhere.
Off we go into the wild blue yonder...
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