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

My Search goes Nationwide. Letter Requesting Medical Assistance My most recent attempts to contact my doctor here in Portland have gone unanswered, so I am expanding my search. I have located two doctors—one in Houston and one in Kansas City—who have experience treating Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy, and I am writing to them for help. Salutations, I am writing to see if you might possibly be able to help me. In January 2006, I began developing various neurological symptoms, including facial paralysis, right-sided weakness, numbness, gait problems, and others. Around the same time, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The cancer is being treated, but the neurological symptoms have continued and are getting worse. After being told twice that I had brain cancer, and undergoing multiple MRIs, CAT scans, and other tests (including four spinal taps—three in one month), it was decided to begin treating me for Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy. The treatment involved three days of Methylpredn...

Does anybody know how I can get in touch with Dr House? Posted early 2009 I just spoke with my Endocrinologist. Here’s how this works: the only part of the human body that stores iodine is thyroid tissue—or, if you no longer have a thyroid, thyroid cancer cells will absorb it. So, a week after I took the radioactive iodine, any place that still showed radioactivity had to be cancer. That’s why they ran the total body scan. Ideally, after a week, all the cancer would have been burned away. The scan showed six “uptake” spots in my neck: three on the left side, one in the thyroid bed, and two on the right. The two on the right worry me most—because that’s the side where all the fat and lymph nodes were removed. Yet cancer still shows there. During the original surgery they found cancer in the lymph nodes, parathyroid, thyroid, and skeletal muscles. The thyroid bed is also risky; another surgery there could threaten my voice. In December I had a modified neck dissection on the ...