Doctor Visit

OOPS.
I got home from the doctor, read the comments here on the blog, and realized we forgot the link to Kalissa’s Etsy shop.  HERE is the link.

I’m popping in quickly to tell you about my doctor’s appointment today.  It was interesting, to say the least.  I don’t even know if I can explain it.

Kalissa ended up going with me.  The day started early with a trip to take Gannon to Craig’s Grandma’s house.  Grandma Dee Dee has been great taking care of Gannon when Kalissa goes to appointments with me.   An added plus she takes early drop-offs.  It was 5:45 am when we left Gannon off.

From there it was the drive to Rochester.  The roads have been great.  Kalissa had an errand so she dropped me off at Mayo Clinic and I went to my first appointment alone.  This was to get the tracer dose of Radioactive Iodine.  I got into the appointment room.  There was a person helping me…more than a nurse, but not a doctor.  There’s a security clearance for people who administer Radioacitve Iodine.

Anyway, she says, “Do you have trouble swallowing pills?”  I said no…she said good.  Then she opens this security box and takes out a bottle of pills.  She explains:  “Typically we have this in liquid form but we were unable to get that.  We were lucky to find it in pill form.  These are your pills.”

The bottle had a lot of pills in it.  I really have no trouble swallowing pills so it wasn’t a big deal but curiously I said, “All of them.”  She said Yes.

So I had to swallow EIGHTEEN pills to get my tracer dose.

Like I said, swallowing pills isn’t a big deal to me as I swallowed four at a time…(Think a little larger than Tylenol gel tabs).  That was all a little weird.  I felt like I was overdosing…

From there, I went to the waiting room for my next appointment.  Kalissa got done with her errands and waited with me.  Seeing my doctor was next.

Here we are in the waiting room.

Kalissa was busy designing a new shirt…I was cross-stitching.

We waited quite a while and were eventually called back.  Then we waited a long time.  My doctor is always really late.

My other kids messaged to see if we had info yet.  Kalissa sent them this picture of me…

Our weird day continued.

First my doctor’s Fellow came in.  Then she came in.  We learned a lot of things.

The reason I haven’t been feeling well these last three days is I am WAY hypothyroid.  It explains most everything that is wrong with me.

Mayo Clinic has done my procedure 26 times.  Something like 14 of those times, the tumor has lit up on the scans.  They treated them.  Of them, 6 have had my type of cancer.

With the odds she explained, we are all very hopeful that my tumor will light up tomorrow morning and I will be able to get treated.

BUT…my doctor cautioned.  After following up, there is a risk that my cancer could mutate to Anaplastic thyroid cancer.  This happened to one of the patients.  This would not be good.  Anaplastic thyroid cancer is not good at all.   It’s more or less a cancer with no treatment options.

The person this happened to had lots of other problems…previous other cancers, gene mutation for breast cancer, elderly and had radiation previously.  There is no way to know if these things attributed to the Anaplastic mutation or it was the treatment.

This was all new news for us.  We’ve come this far and to get new information now was hard.

She asked if I still wanted to do the treatment.

We asked some questions like what does she see for me long-term if I do the treatment.  She explained that they have only been doing this treatment for 2 years or so.  That means there is no real data on how effective it is.

We asked her if I was her mom, what would she recommend.  She said she thought she would still go through with treatment.

Then we talked about my tumor marker.  This supposedly slow-growing cancer doubled in the three months since I’ve last been tested.  It keeps doubling every three months.  Is that really slow growing??

So, with that, even with this new information and the risk of the Anaplastic cancer mutation, we decided to give this a try if the tumor shows on the scan tomorrow.  It wasn’t the information we wanted to hear but I think going forward is the right decision.

She explained that there is about a 30% chance this will all work.  I guess we’re rolling the dice!

On top of all of that….
They moved around some appointments and what was supposed to be today was moved to tomorrow.  Kalissa wants to be with me so she’s making a return visit with me.  Then on top of that, we’re supposed to have bad weather overnight…so

Kalissa and I drove home, scrambled around getting our lives set and are now, likely as you read this, driving back to Rochester to avoid the bad overnight weather.   We’re supposed to have crazy winds with a little snow.  They are predicting white-out conditions.   I have my first appointment tomorrow at 7:45 am so it’s a good idea to stay overnight.

Fingers crossed friends….Let’s roll that dice!