Published February 22th, 2024 in My Journey

It is Wednesday morning 10 o'clock, you have an appointment in the hospital. There you are, in the waiting area, unaware of what is coming for you. A few weeks ago you found a small node in your neck. Your General Practitionair did an ultrasound and found a lump in your thyroid and now you are in the hospital to check it out. I have to be honest, this moment as I'm writing there is a thought in my head 'How could you have not seen it coming?'.

'It is cancer'

Was I really that naive? At that moment I was 36 years old and felt really good. There was nothing that could have indicated that there was something in my body that shouldn't be there. 

So in the waiting area I expected to get reassured that it was just a cyst and it would go away on is own. But that didn't happen. As soon as the doctor, from the nuclear medicine, did the ultrasound, he knew what is was. During the ultrasound he told me there were three larger lumps and multiple smaller ones in my thyroid.  When he went to the lymph nodes I heard him saying 'oww....'. Apparently he saw 6 lymph nodes that already were exposed. And then he told me: 'it is cancer, thyroidcancer. The first thing we need to do know is get a sample of the tissue'. So a few minutes later there were three people in the room and the doctor  took some cells from my thyroid and one lymph node, by sticking a needle in it. 

He already knew it was papillair thyroidcancer, with his more than 30 years of experience. 'The one thing that I should remember', he said, 'this isn't life threatening, it is just very annoying.' and he let me go home. Once I got home I got the call that it was confirmed in the lab: papillair thyroidcancer.

There you have it. Those three words that turn your life upside down, with only 36 years old. I didn't expected to be confronted with cancer at this age. But it happened and now I have to deal with it. I didn't got a lot of time to deal with it, because in two days the PET CT scan was arranged. A scan to see if the cancer has spread in your body.

Just lay down and lay still, for an hour

So two days later, in the same hospital, but this time another waiting area. I wasn't scared for this scan, but the implications of this scan, the reason that I needed one, was hard to handle. Therefore I really wanted to go home and croll in my bed. I couldn't, because I choose to be here. I didn't realize that this scan took about 1,5-2 hours. The thing is, you get injected with radioactive sugar. It takes a while before that sugar is inside the cells. So you need to lay down for an hour after this injection. Not just lay down, but also as still as possible. Because if you move, your muscles will take up the sugar. Then the muscle light up in the scan and that is something we don't want. Cancer consumes a lot of sugar, so the radioactive goes inside the cancercells. That is how this PET CT scan can see where there is cancer inside your body

I cried for 45 minutes

After the scan, when I got home, I broke down. I was in my bathroom, on the floor, and cried for 45 minutes. It was just too much to handle. How could this be happening? Why was it there?

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