Monday, January 31, 2011

So.... kind of a good news bad news situation...

Or really... a good news, bad news, worse news situation maybe...

Ever had a doc call you on a Sunday night?

I did today.

That's... not generally a good sign shall we say.

So the doc has been reviewing my tests, and called me up to go over them.

So, the good news... sort of...

At first we thought there were two separate masses, one growing out of my thyroid, and one in a neighboring lymph node.

The good news is, there are not two masses, there is just one, and it's growing out of my thyroid. The lymph nodes do not appear to be involved.

The bad news...

Instead of being two 3cm masses, it's one 8cm mass.

That's a bad thing.

The worse news... Although they can't officially say it's cancer until we get the biopsy result; non cancerous lesions don't generally get this large, so it's almost certainly cancer.

Oh and being so large, the cancer is most likely stage 2.

That's a much worse thing.

There is one other piece of good news though; even stage 2 thyroid cancer (at least the most common kinds of it. There are six or so different kinds of thyroid cancer, and only two of them are particularly problematic) has a better than 95% survival rate... in fact, if you are otherwise healthy, and there is no lymph node involvement, the survival rate with proper treatment is essentially 100%.

Even with lymph node involvement, the survival rate is like 94%.

Sooo... yeah... good news, bad news.