asleep amidst the flames
Oct. 28th, 2015 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anonymousblackaccording to my doctor, our missing link right now is the thyrotropin alfa manufacturer - burgeoning though my cancer may be, and everybody knows somebody, heck, you know me - there's just not an overwhelming marketplace call for a product utilized for tissue imaging and ablation in thyroid cancer patients. there might only be the one. like there's only one lab in our fine nation that even tests for my troubling protein, which is why it can take more than a week to get results.
doctor's office sent a fax with my numbers their way on the 19th; called yesterday to ask what's up; "what fax now," manufacturer wanted to know, possibly rushing to crack the basement windows and fan the clustered plumes of smoke in that direction with their tab books (sometimes i feel like 'sorry, sorry, so totally stoned' would at least be more interesting as an excuse than the old familiar agony of 'there are very many a lot of you who need so very many things and only a couple of us to provide them'), so doctor's office sent it again yesterday. good thing i checked in.
mostly the check-in was to ask: my research has provided me with a solid grasp of my worst case scenarios (surgical intervention! chemo! death!) could you maybe give me a sense of better or at least neutral outcomes? it sounds like the best outcome is my scans are clean and i just have some unexplained elevation in my TG levels. which: it’s mysterious, nobody knows why it happens, it’s not like i started hanging out with the wrong crowd of lentils or using a bad news laundry detergent.
in that case, we watch. get my blood drawn a little more frequently and investigate further if my TG level continues to go up. the (happily) large window between that and surgery or chemo includes even more aggressive monitoring and, if the cancer moved into the thyroid bed or . . . somewhere (anywhere! maybe not my hair!), further treatment with i-131, which - i’ve heard horror stories about subsequent dosages and the more of that shit you have, the greater your risk of permanently fucking up your salivary glands, but, still. preferable to chemo or surgery. quite preferable to death.
want a fun waiting room game? invent new treatments and assistance products for thyriod cancer patients. do this by finding some clever way of inserting the affix "thyro" into a previously established or made up word. synthyroid. thyrogen. thyroidectomy.
mythyro: getting hounded by someone who heard about your little condition, found some nice pseudoscience on the internets (“stop the thyroid madness” is quite an oxymoron for us thyca patients) and is now vocally insistent you try their sure-fire cure of insufflating turmeric and switching up your meds to desiccated porcine hormone? skip the futile attempts to explain how mammal-based hormone offers not only thoroughly unstable dosages but the very protein you are strategically using lab-made hormone to suppress because, like, you'd actually rather avoid getting cancer again. plus, you think factory farming is horrible? let me repeat that: desiccated. porcine. hormone. we ain’t talking some prosaic little grotto where the adorable pigs are bred with adorable spigots on their throats that they can twist open when they are feeling most abundant with hormone in order to deposit their happy gifts into sweet quilted baskets they then leave on the thyroid hormone farmer’s doorstep. we are pretty much talking stuff that makes this american life correspondents barf. i love my lab-created hormones and am grateful they work for me. but, let's face it. chances are, you aren’t going to be able to explain the complexities of your treatment to the satisfaction of this self-proclaimed endocrinologist friend whose other internet certifications include “gluten = satan” and “flu shots make your eyeballs explode” (got mine yesterday, nope), so why not get yourself the mythyro (patent pending), which is not so much user-friendly explanatory literature as it is a cudgel, with which you can use to beat your helpful adviser into blissful silence. or, if you’re a pacifist, wave it threateningly and yell like that guy who walks by the apartment complex at three in the morning. should clear up the issue faster than turmeric! [snort]
thyrogeddon: in the weeks leading up to my thyroidectomy, i instituted a “countdown to thyrogeddon” on facebook, because when something is terrifying, what else are you going to do but make stupid jokes about it?
thyroscrub: thinking twice (maybe three or four times) about that teal, purple, and pink-ribboned butterfly cancer memorial tattoo you got a couple years back, drunk on the promise of a 99% five-year survival rate and the idea of your cancer receding into the cave of defeated cancers, never to be heard from again, like the good cancer it’s supposed to be? realizing that your actual cancer has left more than sufficient markings all over your person and lifestyle? feeling the ironic burn of staring at the damn thing as you wait for the folks at the radiology clinic to roll over another lead-lined canister of radioactive treats? thyroscrub won’t actually remove that needle-injected fucker for you, only professionally administered lasers can (safely) do that, but buy our product anyway! that way you can proudly display your submission to survivor community herd of instinct plus we could use the cash.
thyrola: ain’t no cola like thyrola. mmm, thyrola!
thyroach: infinitely helpful in awaiting the results of your various ‘do i have cancer again’ injections, extractions, and two-day scans. tab books not included.
eagerly anticipating your creations.
doctor's office sent a fax with my numbers their way on the 19th; called yesterday to ask what's up; "what fax now," manufacturer wanted to know, possibly rushing to crack the basement windows and fan the clustered plumes of smoke in that direction with their tab books (sometimes i feel like 'sorry, sorry, so totally stoned' would at least be more interesting as an excuse than the old familiar agony of 'there are very many a lot of you who need so very many things and only a couple of us to provide them'), so doctor's office sent it again yesterday. good thing i checked in.
mostly the check-in was to ask: my research has provided me with a solid grasp of my worst case scenarios (surgical intervention! chemo! death!) could you maybe give me a sense of better or at least neutral outcomes? it sounds like the best outcome is my scans are clean and i just have some unexplained elevation in my TG levels. which: it’s mysterious, nobody knows why it happens, it’s not like i started hanging out with the wrong crowd of lentils or using a bad news laundry detergent.
in that case, we watch. get my blood drawn a little more frequently and investigate further if my TG level continues to go up. the (happily) large window between that and surgery or chemo includes even more aggressive monitoring and, if the cancer moved into the thyroid bed or . . . somewhere (anywhere! maybe not my hair!), further treatment with i-131, which - i’ve heard horror stories about subsequent dosages and the more of that shit you have, the greater your risk of permanently fucking up your salivary glands, but, still. preferable to chemo or surgery. quite preferable to death.
want a fun waiting room game? invent new treatments and assistance products for thyriod cancer patients. do this by finding some clever way of inserting the affix "thyro" into a previously established or made up word. synthyroid. thyrogen. thyroidectomy.
mythyro: getting hounded by someone who heard about your little condition, found some nice pseudoscience on the internets (“stop the thyroid madness” is quite an oxymoron for us thyca patients) and is now vocally insistent you try their sure-fire cure of insufflating turmeric and switching up your meds to desiccated porcine hormone? skip the futile attempts to explain how mammal-based hormone offers not only thoroughly unstable dosages but the very protein you are strategically using lab-made hormone to suppress because, like, you'd actually rather avoid getting cancer again. plus, you think factory farming is horrible? let me repeat that: desiccated. porcine. hormone. we ain’t talking some prosaic little grotto where the adorable pigs are bred with adorable spigots on their throats that they can twist open when they are feeling most abundant with hormone in order to deposit their happy gifts into sweet quilted baskets they then leave on the thyroid hormone farmer’s doorstep. we are pretty much talking stuff that makes this american life correspondents barf. i love my lab-created hormones and am grateful they work for me. but, let's face it. chances are, you aren’t going to be able to explain the complexities of your treatment to the satisfaction of this self-proclaimed endocrinologist friend whose other internet certifications include “gluten = satan” and “flu shots make your eyeballs explode” (got mine yesterday, nope), so why not get yourself the mythyro (patent pending), which is not so much user-friendly explanatory literature as it is a cudgel, with which you can use to beat your helpful adviser into blissful silence. or, if you’re a pacifist, wave it threateningly and yell like that guy who walks by the apartment complex at three in the morning. should clear up the issue faster than turmeric! [snort]
thyrogeddon: in the weeks leading up to my thyroidectomy, i instituted a “countdown to thyrogeddon” on facebook, because when something is terrifying, what else are you going to do but make stupid jokes about it?
thyroscrub: thinking twice (maybe three or four times) about that teal, purple, and pink-ribboned butterfly cancer memorial tattoo you got a couple years back, drunk on the promise of a 99% five-year survival rate and the idea of your cancer receding into the cave of defeated cancers, never to be heard from again, like the good cancer it’s supposed to be? realizing that your actual cancer has left more than sufficient markings all over your person and lifestyle? feeling the ironic burn of staring at the damn thing as you wait for the folks at the radiology clinic to roll over another lead-lined canister of radioactive treats? thyroscrub won’t actually remove that needle-injected fucker for you, only professionally administered lasers can (safely) do that, but buy our product anyway! that way you can proudly display your submission to survivor community herd of instinct plus we could use the cash.
thyrola: ain’t no cola like thyrola. mmm, thyrola!
thyroach: infinitely helpful in awaiting the results of your various ‘do i have cancer again’ injections, extractions, and two-day scans. tab books not included.
eagerly anticipating your creations.
