How I See It: Reflections on spirituality, technology, and the art of everyday life

Dear Friends, This afternoon I got a call from my doctor. He told me that the biopsy confirmed I do, in fact, have papillary thyroid cancer. This is the same cancer I had two years ago. At that time, I had my thyroid removed and underwent radiation therapy. I was told that if you’re going to have cancer, thyroid is the kind to get — it’s the most easily treated of all the cancers. But when they removed it last time, they said it was in everything they touched — parathyroid, skeletal muscles, and lymph nodes. The doctor called it “massive and extensive.” This time it has appeared in a lymph node, so the sooner I get it out, the better. Now it’s back, and I’ll be starting treatment again as quickly as I can arrange it. The doctors still want to run some tests before surgery. I’m hoping to have it done the second week of November, but there’s a lot to do before then. Sometime this week, I hope to meet with my surgeon. After the surgery comes the radiation treatment. This isn’t th...

A brief history of my medical problems (in case you don’t already Dear friends, Looking at the updates I have been posting (on Facebook) and the notes, it occurs to me that some of you who have only recently found me again might not know why I am having these tests and problems. So here is a brief (even though it is long) summary of what has been going on the last couple of years. In late 2005 I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and they found I had lumps on my thyroid. In January I was given a needle biopsy of the thyroid. After the biopsy (I do not know if my neurological problems are connected to this biopsy, but it started within 3 days) I began having various neurological symptoms including bilateral facial paralysis (at its worst I had to pinch my mouth closed to chew), sensitivity to light and sound, double vision, blurred vision (for months my eyeglass prescription would change almost daily), changes in sense of taste, nausea, fatigue, drooping eyelids (the r...