Tuesday, September 13, 2005

so that's all right, then?

I guess so.

After nearly 11 entire days of letting horrible treatment-related scenarios run through my mind, my endo called me today. The biopsy was negative, my Tg is only slightly elevated, TSH is fine, blah blah blah. Still wants me to go to Houston, though, and I am, as I have said several times already today in other venues, happy to go.

I don't feel "adequately managed" at this point, and so a referral to the best treatment center sounds just right to me.

To explain my disgruntlement, take the biopsy. It was not a good sample, and if the doctor had any interest in really following my case, she wouldn't be resting so easily on that "negative" result. Then there's the rise in my Tg, even though I am way suppressed (TSH at 0.05, yikes! I wonder, could we ease up a bit on the T3 and see if my digestion slows down? -- nevermind, I'll ask at MDA.)

Probably the thing that gets me the most, though, is that her demeanor is so solicitous and caring when I'm sitting in the room with her, but once I leave the premises, it's nearly impossible to get a hold of her. (That's probably -- almost assuredly -- not fair, but I'm talking about my feelings here, which may or may not be based on actual experiences.) So, when I saw her on the 2nd after the ultrasound, she actually took my hand in a comforting gesture before she told me that she wanted me to go to MDA, and then prepped me for the biopsy.

You know, when you have cancer and your doctor makes the point of holding your hand before telling you something, it gives you an impression of Very Bad News. So today's conversation, which was all la-di-da, confused me. How did we get from intensely concerned to casual? On the strength of that pathetic biopsy report? Please.

Anyway: one of the Thycans on the Yahoo support group told me it's common for Tg to elevate after a procedure, so that slight uptick might have been because of the FNA. Although the blood was drawn within 30 minutes of the two sticks for the FNA, so I don't know if it would have kicked in that quickly. But apparently I was wrong when I said there was no way to spin that increase in Tg! Learn something new everyday, thank God.

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