anywhere i can find to put words

the boil down: it isn't thyroid tissue, which means i won't need surgery at this point in time. however, she's still not sure what's going on. she has a theory, so i'll be getting more blood drawn in the near future. for the record, i know this is pretty damn good news but i'm still... cramping my way out of three months in crash position and suffering from severe qualifier fatigue, so my response is kind of muted right now. text below.

______________________________________________________
Subject: A secure message from your provider's office
Message: Lab/Pathology Results

Judith,

I apologize for the delay; results have been coming back slow this past month.

I did get the results of the pathology and TG levels. The good news is that of the 3 areas I sampled, the TG level came back very low. In addition, the pathology of the lymph node didn't show anything to suggest thyroid.

I have discussed your case with others in my group and 1 possibility is that you may have an antibody that is making the TG level falsely positive. This would explain why the level is just slightly elevated and why the previous scan was negative. There is a lab in California (USC) that specializes in these type of antibodies. I'd like to send a sample there for both a repeat TG level as well as some specific antibodies that I have in mind. We can draw it here in the office and send it out. Call/email my secretary to schedule a lab visit and I will be in touch when I get the results.

that took a lot less time than i was expecting.

the boil down: looks like i'm on the hook for a couple more biopsies (FNA = fine needle aspiration, delightful as it sounds), but mostly to play it safe. my scan was clean (which is good), bloodwork is still weird (which is not good, but sometimes inexplicable). details below if you're interested in the numbers. i think i need to go wilt in a corner and weep with either relief or the inevitably stilted nature of this relief. one of those.

____________________________________________________
Judith,

I've received all of your results.

The scan is negative, which means that there are no areas that took up the iodine during the stimulation.

The TG level stimulated 0.3 -> 5.2 which suggests that there may be some remaining tissue in the neck. This is most likely benign thyroid tissue residual from the surgery.

I'd like to do a FNA of 2 areas: the right thyroid bed, and a right-sided lymph node. Both of these areas were stable in size compared to the ultrasound done last year, so my level of concern is low. But I'd like to know exactly where that TG elevation is coming from so we know what we are following.

I'm going to have my personal assistant call you to set up the FNA. If you have any questions or would like to discuss over the phone please let me know.

sunday morning i dreamed i came home from my first trip to the hospital and held up a script for ben to see.

“look, ben! my endocrinologist gave me a prescription for medicinal marijuana to help me manage my escalated thyroid symptoms!”

“that’s great,” dream ben responded.

“look, ben!” i pulled out a second script. “my endocrinologist gave you a prescription for medicinal marijuana to help you manage my escalated thyroid symptoms!”

*
monday i woke while it was still dark, queasy, with a headache. i took my synthroid and then a pee test, visualizing a veritable old-growth forest’s worth of pregnancy waivers waiting for me at the endocrinologist’s office. weird things go through your brain while you sit on the edge of the bathtub not sure what you’ll do if the extremely unexpected has occurred. no second line, so i tossed the test and went back to bed. “guess who’s not pregnant,” i said to ben.

“me,” ben answered, spooning up behind me.

“that is also correct,” i said, and we fell back asleep.

hours later, i drove to GBMC. got there early. got blood drawn from my arm, got my first injection in the butt. the technician was cute and friendly; it was only painfully awkward in accordance with the literal interpretations of pain and awkwardness. i’ve nearly decided that i’ll get a dramatic black rose tattooed inside my right elbow because i am so sick of looking at needle bruises, but it’s possible this might not be the best point at which for me to make such decisions. after my shortest trip ever into that office, i drove around to the main hospital to pick up a parking pass. an old woman in a wheelchair on the other side of the glass doors nodded and then looked past me while i realized the last time i’d been in this part of the complex, i’d been in a wheelchair, too, squinting into the winter light for ben’s car. that felt kind of weird. crossing your own ghost usually is.

tuesday i was still early, but by a little less. there were no spaces in the lot i usually use for the endocrinologist, and the valet lot across the way had lots of spaces, as well as several posted signs warning “you patients even think about it and we’ll tow your ass.” figuring my ass had a hard enough day ahead of it, i tried to find somewhere else to park. and could not find anywhere else to park. and really could not find anywhere else to park. all over the campus, i drove, and could not find anywhere else to park.

i would tell you more about this phase of yesterday, as i do feel i learned some important things about myself, but they essentially boil down to “certain varieties of driving-related stress transform me into my father cursing endlessly at the computer a hell of a lot faster than i’d like to admit” and i am not proud. when i tearfully gave up and drove back to my usual lot, fingers crossed, someone was pulling out of the second space available to me and i don’t know who or where they are, but i love them. truly. madly. deeply. my favorite part? as i was jogging toward the physician’s pavilion, i came across a big (but apparently not big enough) sign posted inside the entryway inviting anyone who couldn’t find parking in that lot to use the valet lot across the way. silly me, trusting what the signs said in the actual lot.

the second thyrogen shot needs to be given 24 hours after the first, so same time, different cheek. same technician, too, but i feel like i disappointed him somehow. i don’t know. get there late, little flustered, stumbling into stuff, just… yeah. i’m sad because i really thought we had something special. i’ll see him again friday, let you know how that goes.

then i left the hospital and over the course of my three mile drive home develop sudden and intense concern regarding the continuing operational safety of my automobile. like, the brake pedal pushes back on me a little. like i have to press significantly harder on the brake to get the car to stop. like sometimes the pedal vibrates a little in a way that makes me feel like my sternum’s gone hollow. so, i take surface roads home, keep my hand hovered over the parking brake, and drive agonizingly slow. i make it all the way home safely, but my hands shake and TMJ screams for hours afterward. ben decides it’s safe enough to drive again, but only to the mechanic. he offers to take it this morning and i let him, because: cancer. $420 (so far) to fix. praise be to the red cup that this didn’t go down on the beltway.

last night ben’s mother called and asked how i was feeling. “well, adverse reactions include headache and nausea. yesterday, i had a headache. today, i’m trying nausea.” she wondered if i’d taken anything to manage that, like ginger tea. “yes,” i said, glancing furtively at my stash box. “ginger tea.”

today was my first day in radiology. ben brought me in, as had been our plan even before my car went rogue. parking was less of an issue and this time we even went into the right part of the building. again, ghosts: last time i’d walked through this lot, it was after my first whole body scan and i’d stopped just outside the car door to gather handfuls of freshly fallen sweet gum seed pods because of course i did. folk name? witches burr. magical uses? protection and prosperity. personal connotations? i like to keep burrs, cactus bones, and thorns about to remind myself i can be “prickly” when i need to be. plus look at the things.

the administrator invites us to her desk. she finishes my name for me, and picks up an alarming stack of papers with my name at the top of every page. “they sent me a book about you,” she informs me, turning it out for us to see, and asks for my ID and insurance cards. she scans every sheet in the stack and gives us a complimentary parking pass. which i did not even know was a thing! but now i have one! and it does not have an expiration date! which is good because my current plan is to use the parking pass i bought on monday for the rest of the week and then not need to come back to the hospital until next year, for my annual diagnosis anniversary appointment, because oh my god. i mean, i might make an exception for the cute technician. like if he wants to take me for lunch to the cafeteria, which the cafeteria there is pretty good, even if the one time i went it was on a half-service holiday and i pretty much only got a side dish of steamed vegetables to push around on my plate in misery because i’d just been told they couldn’t release me until my calcium levels stabilized because plummeting calcium levels can mean hypoparathyroidism, the end result of which i assume to be severe injury or death, bad muscle cramps at least, which i did not want. so: over steamed vegetables i forced myself to accept i'd be staying at the hospital another night. even as unbelievably incredibly and amazingly friendly as everyone in that hospital has always been, i really just wanted to take my big bottle of hydrocodone and go home. at the very least get the fucking i.v. needles out of my writing hand.

the radiology doctor retrieves me from the waiting room and walks with me back into the hall with biohazard signs on every door. “hey,” he says, indicating my eurosport messenger bag. “i have that same bag.”

“got it for christmas,” i tell him. “a lot of research went into my choice of this bag,”

he nods. “you’d fit right in here,” and opens the door.

he invites me to have a seat in the same curtained work area i had on RAI day in 2013 and hands me the first pregnancy waiver of the week. i sign it and he adds it to my book from administration. then he explains the day’s activities. i am to receive an imaging dose of radioactive iodine for my scan tomorrow. the preparation, I-123, is significantly less volatile than the I-131 i had in 2013. additionally, the dosages, 75mci for treatment vs. 1.2mci for imaging, mean that i will not have to observe quarantine precautions at all. “well, except maybe don’t hug a pregnant woman for hours at a stretch,” he laughs.

the bottle for my pills is covered with biohazard warnings and my name. the doctor sets water and a plastic pill cup on the desk in front of me. “there are seven pills,” he explains. “so unless you’d like to try to swallow them all at once, which i do not recommend, what i’ll do is put a single pill in your cup, you use the cup to take the pill without touching it, and have a sip of water while i set you up with your next pill.” so, then, seven radioactive binge shots it is. the capsules are green and white and in two layers of glass. the big book of thyroid cancer says they would have been exposed within the last 30 hours. i wonder where they do that, i think, then decide maybe i don't need to know that.

"are you going to run a geiger counter over me," i ask after the first pill. "last time they ran a geiger counter over me." they also gave me a letter, explaining to the NSA what to do if they intercepted me on the subway. then they chased me out the back door. i did not gather sweet gum seed pods that day. in fact, ben had really convince me to sit with him in the front passenger seat of his car and we're talking a volkswagen beetle, here, folks, not a lot of leg room in the back for the taller ladies. anyway, that was his winning argument, in the end. it's a beetle, judy, and it's less than four miles. it really does not make that much difference if you sit in the front or in the back.

"nah, that's only for special occasions."

"okay," i shrug, a little disappointed. "but you might want to check that out."

one of the other doctors walks over to watch and chat. true to my not-quite-gen-x definitely-not-millennial priorities, my primary concern about the next day involves whether or not it's cool for me to wear headphones. maybe it might be? maybe. ben thinks i should put the lotus flower CD on my android instead of trying to figure out where my most recent (1999?) discman got to. okay, benjamin, if you want to go all whippersnapper on me.

“wild time in radiology,” i say, after throwing back my fifth pill.

*

tomorrow they’re scanning me. it’s probably not the most legible request most of you have had to this point, but pray for lack of uptake.

basically i'm setting up a lean-to on the GBMC campus next week. the week's events begin with $4000 worth of thyrogen shot into my ass. what can i say? my heart's all aflutter, though that might technically be palpitations.

have you ever been on a roller coaster with one of these? there's one at great adventure in new jersey. they strap you in and roll you out onto the tracks. then the train stops and you just wait. staring at that abrupt ninety-degree difference between where you are and where you will soon be. then there's this sound. like a rubber band on jupiter's headgear snapping. the boy teenagers behind you start counting, the girl teenagers behind you start howling and you can't stand it can't stand it: until all at once you explode forward, then skyward, at 128 miles an hour. straight up and straight down. it's too much to process, that first time. my first memory of kingda ka is comprised entirely of stills. green track and blue sky. green track and parking lot pavement. the hems of my military surplus pants up over my knees. why subject yourself to that but goddamn is it cathartic. to have an event occur that is equivalent to or greater than your advance terror of it. to scream and scream and scream. then, to look at your partner, giddy with cascades of endorphin as the train rolls back into the station. you pull your pant legs back down to your ankles, dislodge the smashed flies from your t-shirt, get out of the train and like that, it's done. no waiting a week to hear back on if you made it. no increasingly scary followup needles.

there's a reason i turn to roller coasters in times of heightened anxiety.

so. angst and emotional backsliding. i don't want to have cancer again. i really don't want to have cancer again. could that be a more forgone conclusion? it's like, the hyperbolic example you throw at friends wondering about the job you left or the dick ex you curbed. do you want it back? about as much as i'd want cancer. turns out, though, that cancer tops the charts in the "things i don't want back" hit parade.

thinking about that, maybe.

thinking about that, maybe it's a good thing that isn't an option. i'm really not at my most evolved, right now, and anyway that mall bookstore chain no longer exists.

so, what. is this residue? unsorted business? the idea that i powered through treatment, didn't cope with my feelings, ignored the pain is, on one level, absurd. i do not bury emotional things. if anything, i strip down, slather myself up with honey and roll around in emotional things. that's how you get the good writing, you know. artistic edgeplay. write until it hurts and then keep the fuck going. though maybe the first time with adult supervision and do not combine alcohol, utility blades, and that first siouxsie and the banshees album until you've been officially certified by the board.

good creative writing instructors will tell you that writers needn't be miserable when they write. they promote self-care and combating addiction as a crucial aspect of a vibrant and sustainable craft, as they should. because yes, that's a version of reality, and maybe you are one of the lucky ones who fits into that. long-time creative writers will tell you that it is a spectrum and depending on the nature of your creations. depending on the nature of your creations. right? so remember how that big monologue i did a while back opens with the line, "i named our dead child iris and buried her in white"? ain't all puppies and sunflowers over here, folks. i've learned appropriate deep diving techniques and so far have always come back up, but have also acquired some permanent scars and stains over the years, and learned some things about humanity - on a macro and a micro level - that, gosh golly, sometimes i'd rather not know.

at the same time, i know there's some truth to the idea that i jettisoned key concerns in coping with my diagnosis. occasionally with no intention of picking them up again later, which is uncharacteristic, but, what, you think i had any clue what i was doing, where it was going, or what was going to come back on me with blood-hungry teeth in triplicate? because i didn't. i was scared and confused and working overtime just trying to figure out what i was going to do about my body.

and that's the thing. sometimes the honey slathering actually happens because there's another issue - or maybe an entire class of issues - that i'm working to avoid. and there was a lot of that, around the time of my diagnosis. i'd come to several crisis points involving matters like my living situation, failing relationships, and my freelance work. so much went to shit in my four months of diagnostic limbo that it was easy to pick and choose, because there was no way i was going to be able to deal with all of it by the time i started treatment. so: i did some slashing and burning, some of it regrettable. of course i didn't deal with that at the time, because, shortly after my surgery, college bff completed her in-progress cancer ditch. several months later, when i demonstrated little enthusiasm for her invitation to reinvigorate our friendship by pretending she hadn't done that, she blamed me for abandoning her. the best part about that drama was how there was always another little addendum springing up when my horrible, horrible jettisoned concerns started scratching at the bedroom door again.

look. i'm saying this as much for myself as for anyone because i've definitely been on both sides of this equation: if you were an asshole to a friend in crisis, own it. say you are sorry. skip the guilt-trippy vaguebooking. just tell your friend you regret hurting them, want to fix it, and do appropriate follow-through.

"appropriate follow-through" means being attentive to your friend and respecting who they are and what they need now. if you ditched, your friend has undergone significant changes since the last time you were in communication. some of that might involve their perception of your relationship. when you're going through a crisis, things are going to come up about your friends because things come up about every fucking thing you can imagine. dietary choices. the city you live in. lost loves. current loves. how you are handling your killing secrets. the color of your automobile. and, of course, friends. so if a close friends withdraws during that crisis, things are going to come up about them, specifically. inevitable progressions from the horror of i cannot survive without this person in my life, you know? because turns out maybe i can.

if your friend needs time, accept that. don't force it. don't demand time frames. don't comment on how you are giving them the time they need, because that is passive-aggressive bullshit. if you hadn't been an asshole, your friend wouldn't need time. just accept that you fucked up, your friendship isn't easily going to be as it was, and your friend might not be able to go back. there is a significant difference between attending to somebody's needs and pressuring them into behaving the way you want them to behave. a lot of the time that difference can be observed in how much and how loudly the injuring party is describing their own a) generosity and/or b) pain.

the other side of everything i just said is that when you walk away from certain relationships, you do it with everything inside of you screaming not to do it. except time moves on, even within the agonizing cycle of that regret, rat-a-tat-tat, but maybe if i, but possibly if i, but i could always, except you could not. you've reorganized the universe to account for this awful reality of a friend you held dear who didn't need or want you as much as you needed or wanted them. what it feels like to be crisis-ditched is: this person gave up on me because i wasn't worth facing the fear they have around my issue. they did not value me over that expense. it could mean the two of you were not sharing the same relationship. if things weren't working regardless, if there were signs of pending failure regardless, it's not only unfair to put the ditched party in the place of initiating a reconciliation, it risks returning you both back into that floundering trajectory.

deciding that initial approach is best left to the friend you were an asshole to is really not a viable option, either. nope. any translation of "i decided you didn't want my friendship anymore" is still pure asshole. you're going to have to be vulnerable. you're going to have to risk rejection. if you aren't willing to do that, you might not honestly want that friend back in your life as much as their amenities. that's what all the therapists keep telling me, anyway, as i prepare to never ever ever publish that horse-stunning seven volume set of 'vortex letters that should not exist but yes they do oh my god yes they do.'

scratch, scratch, scratch.

maybe with big trauma like cancer, there are certain processes that are going to unfold on their own time frame. regardless of how long it's been. regardless of how you've handled earlier stages. the threat of re-occurrence is distinct from an initial diagnosis. we come to each emotion independent of all prior. something in me keeps forgetting that.

Cancer is tiresome. How is cancer tiresome? Let me count the ways.

First of all, the terror of it. As in eaten away and calcified with fear. Cancer is always there. It spends all your money and never replenishes the gas in your car. It talks smack about you to your loved ones, convincing some of them you're going to die and it's best to just abandon you to your precious cancer that you just had have: 'cos dying’s a sign of personal weakness, right? Because people who don't have cancer never do that.

Wake up in the morning to cancer punching its way through your bedroom door with an axe: "HERE'S CANCER!" Take the pill you must take every morning into oblivion because of cancer. Have some food once you are allowed to consume food again, but! Not anything iron rich, not anything calcium rich, not at least for four hours, and god don’t you even think fondly about grapefruit ever again. Thankfully, none of these items are in abundance in one’s most readily accessible breakfast materials. Look at job listings, cancer's right there with you, chewing with its mouth open, folding creases into the spines of all your favorite trade paperbacks. Goddamnit, cancer. We talked about this. If you're going to keep hanging around, I need you to start pulling some weight. Like maybe you could vacuum. Scrub out the mildew stains in the toilet. Cancer, isn't it kind of late for you to be sitting around in your underwear?

And then there are the doctors. Everything is about cancer with them. Because my mother had cancer, right? And now I’ve had cancer, right? Got me by the short hairs every time: what, this mole, get thee to a specialist, it might be cancer. Your iron levels, they are slightly low, let's get you a colonoscopy, it might be cancer. When was your last mammogram? Shouldn’t you be getting more of those? How about it, remember. It could be cancer. It was for your mom. It was for you. Let's get that thing biopsied lickety-split because you know what? It probably isn't, but let's just be on the safe side, your blood pressure was too low anyhow. Whadya mean sometimes your one boob hurts?

It's worse than me, even: the medical directives, the scrutiny and paranoia, early detection is your best friend, your considerate lover, your last available life boat. All the same, they're worse than me, popping awake, 4:26 and I only just fell asleep. But what is this irritation in my urinary tract? Did I read something several weeks back about a beverage I consume every day demonstrating an increased incidence of bladder cancer in the native culture where it is consumed every day? So by 4:43 i am yelling at myself (again) to not go look for information on the internet and by 5:01 I am looking for information on the internet (again) and cancer's having a good laugh about that one, I mean look at her! Seriously! What's going on with that?

And people want to help. At least, some people want to help. Other people want you to stop protruding from the side of their universe like some unsightly cancerous wart reminding them of failure, chaos, and the reality that sometimes the world is ugly and unfair and you cannot make it better with the sheer force of your will. These are the people I have been biting my tongue about, because I would love to be someone who can only focus on the awesome amazing wonderful good listeners and covered dish makers, the folks who’ve gifted me with inexplicably illegal discomfort moderation tools, the people who came over and watched movies with me when I wasn’t too radioactive for that, the people who loaned me Buffy comic books and sent me MP3 playlists through DropBox when I was, but, see, I cannot. Not always.

These other people. These less awesome people. I am going to describe them to you so you can give me and other cancer patients the gift of not being one of them, so pay attention. Their primary motivation is that they need you to make the world fair again, damnit, at least they need you to make their world fair again. What they need you to do is accept culpability for your cancer, already, or at least assure them that your cancer is not so big a deal. First they need to know what you did to get cancer. Then they need to tell you what to do to not have cancer anymore. Spoiler alert: it generally involves behaving a lot more like they do.

Such people tell you with authority about something they might have read or dreamed about reading once somewhere (but you're into that, right? You're all into dreams and stuff! Especially as the dreams of near strangers can always be applied to your healthcare needs!) that saturating your scalp every six hours with grenadine is supposed to prevent cancer. Also doing something with gluten but i'm not sure what just definitely not eating it. Only eat meat and root vegetables. Because those lentils you like so much might give you cancer I heard that somewhere too. And get yourself some assault weapons because you obviously need more pleasure in your life. Did you know that you can give yourself cancer? Just by thinking about it you can. Just by letting down your psychic defenses against cancer, you can get cancer. I mean you’re so negative. You talk all the time about what’s actually happening to you instead of what you’d like to believe is happening to you. That's probably why you got it before, because you're so damn dark and ornery. So come on! Do something I said to protect yourself against cancer! Start a gratitude journal! Do yoga classes! You want to get better, right? Finally, they need me to understand my unconscious supplication to western medicine’s culture of fear, the money-grubbing cancer perpetuating machine, because basically everything science does claiming to help me avoid getting killed by cancer before I turn 40 is actually giving me more worse cancer all the time.

P.S., NO.

And these people want to help, or at least they want to make the world fair again, so I ask them: so what kind of cancer, exactly, does this seemly unorthodox grenadine scalp treatment protect you against? Oh, I don't know. just cancer, I guess. Aren't they all pretty much the same?






Oh, and something else about the doctors? Something else about the doctors or at least the doctor’s support staff that nobody ever warns you about in the recovery room? Sometimes they are the “you are an unsightly cancerous wart protruding from the side of my universe” people. They force you into serving the role of the dark harbinger of cancer; at least the dark harbinger of us all being equal in the eyes of cancer. Because while everybody everywhere seems to know somebody who has dealt with thyca, nobody anywhere seems to have dealt with it in the first person, and the concept that: this person, this person who is now sitting here, on your exam table, in exam room three, this person who seemed like a perfectly nice perfectly normal person, who seemed like someone who would’ve kept her scalp soaked in grenadine like everybody knows you should, this person is someone who fairly recently dealt with cancer and oh, my god, she’s a girl like I am, and oh, my god, she’s roughly my age and and race and hair color and I must do something to differentiate myself from her, so it is imperative that I must tell her to her face right here in exam room three why probably she got cancer. Then I’ll get the prize, which is never getting cancer myself. Because that’s your greatest defense against cancer: vacuuming up logic into increasingly demented applications of bootstrap theory and victim blaming.

So they’ll walk into the exam room. They’ll smile at me in my medical gown. I’ll smile back. We will exchange a pleasant greeting. They’ll pick up my medical history. They’ll page through it with a growing look of concern. They’ll ask me about the sheet, hoping perhaps it is an error and this sheet actually belongs to a different patient, possibly a very surly one who is the opposite of several of our identifying variables, possibly one with the words “I WILL BE DIAGNOSED WITH SOME FORM OF CANCER SHORTLY AFTER I TURN THIRTY-SEVEN AND I DESERVE IT” printed across his forehead, in accordance with helpful local zoning laws. They’ll tentatively approach the topic: I see you went through something here. And I’ll nod, and they’ll nod. Having apparently given my absolute consent to play the game, the game can begin.

Attempt 1: It runs in your family, right?
Response: Not at all. The research indicates my variant of cancer is in no way hereditary. A lot of the time, people just get it.
Attempt 2 [may be cycled through several times with variations] But you [smoke, drink, get sun tans, don’t check for ticks, occasionally store your neck in microwaves, don’t maintain a gratitude journal, eat asbestos, eat red dye, eat babies, worship the devil] …right?!
Response: No.
Attempt 3: …Maybe like your diet? Maybe like, too much red dye or lentils?
Response: I mean, I’m a vegetarian. I do eat lentils, but my endo said diet really didn’t have anything to do with it, so I decided it was probably worth the risk. I need the protein!
Attempt 3 (cont.): But what gave you cancer?
Response: Nobody really knows what causes it. It just happens for some people. Usually women. Usually in our age group. They do think that this can be triggered by being exposed to radiation at a young age. The thing is, most of us have something like that in our history, I mean most of us at this point in history in this part of the world have no idea what that is, but it's usually there - it just doesn’t always become cancer, so there are probably other factors. If you're concerned, there’s this little self-check -
Attempt 4: [Grabbing onto this as tightly as they can] That’s it! That’s got to be it! That’s got to be why you had cancer! You grew up in Chernobyl, right? Or I bet your elementary school was on the property of an evil radioactive wizard? And you personally angered him in some way? I bet that’s it?
Response: ...no...
Attempt 4 (cont.) But that’s it! it’s got to be it! Please tell me what horrible atomic anomaly led to you being in this situation or at least help me make it your own fault so I can fall asleep tonight warm in my confidence that no such thing will ever happen to me for I am good and pure and beautiful and the angels love me too much.
Response: [shrugs] I guess had some dental x-rays when I was little.
Attempt 4 (cont.) [clearly this is my fault] AND THEY DIDN’T SHIELD YOU PROPERLY! I KNEW IT!
Response: …no, they shielded me fine.
Attempt 4 (cont.) B-b-b-but I had… dental… x-rays… when I was a kid.
Response: Shhh, shhh, I promise, you are no more vulnerable to cancer now than you were before we started this conversation.
Attempt 5: But I mean, you’re better now, right? And the treatment wasn’t so bad. It’s the good cancer, right? Right? It’s the cancer approximation of ice cream! It wasn’t that bad at all and now it is over forever and you don’t have to think about it anymore and you’re wise, and you post videos on YouTube of you expressing that wisdom and your gratitude for your brush with death that taught you how to live authentically at last. Sometimes you dance.
Response: I mean, I didn’t have to undergo chemo, at least, and I am very grateful it’s seemed to respond so well to treatment. But I lost a vital organ and I’m on prescription medication for the rest of my life and the cancer could reoccur at any time so I actually do have to think about it or issues related to it quite a lot. And sure, I’m grateful for my current prognosis. But I’m also pretty sure I was living authentically before all of this and I gotta tell you that catching yourself feel envy about people who still have non-cancerous - not even necessarily absolutely functional, sometimes just non-cancerous - thyroids, even when you know better, is some pretty messed up, guilt inspiring bullshit. Among other very weird and horrible mental places that you seem to go without your own knowledge and startle into awareness in the middle of with absolutely no way out but time. Also I am here. Sitting on your exam table. In exam room three. Because maybe I have a different kind of cancer, which, you know, could also happen. Like it could. For anyone.
Admission of defeat: Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Response: Hey, look, I’m sorry for disabling your capacity to maintain the Just World Hypothesis but really… could you please just take that scalpel over there and gouge this here suspicious looking mole from my body so we can find out if I have cancer again, as I was promised at the consultation? Because I also used to be good and pure and - sorta attractive, at least if you’re into that sort of thing - and some angels dug me a bit, too, but now I am very hungry and would like to go home to climb fully clothed into the empty bathtub because everything in my life continues to descend into horrible chaos that’s killing me slowly, at least until the results of this biopsy come back.
Admission of defeat (cont.) [sobbing uncontrollably] Please leave.
Response: Could I put my clothes back on first?!
Admission of defeat (cont.) NO.

POINT SET AND MATCH ANONYMOUSBLACK
MY PRIZE IS CRYING


It really is astonishing how often cancer patients must comfort near strangers about the existence of their cancer. Please do not be one of these people.

I do not (hopefully, knock wood, god an' willin', by jeezum crow, don’t forget to tip your servers) currently have cancer, but I will be a cancer patient for the rest of my days. And it is tiresome. It is tedious. It is expensive and confusing and sad. You cannot convince me otherwise, especially if you've never had cancer yourself, so please do not try. My body is different now, because of cancer: I lose all kinds of hair. I’ve put on twenty pounds. (“You were too skinny before anyway,” the helpful people say helpfully, often smiling and laughing. And I smile, and I kind of laugh, and I am polite as I can be - because I want to be kind! I want to be grateful! I want to be a magical unicorn starchild who can speak to the masses about how my cancer gave me back my soul! And taught me to love! And now I am completely recovered and safe from ever going through that again! And also I went through it so you don’t have to and I am sooooo happy I got to do that for you! And everything’s sparkles and rainbows forever! At the very least, I want to seem polite - even as my brain sweats with the repressed rage of “YOU WANNA BUY ME A NEW FUCKING WARDROBE, HELPFUL PERSON? BECAUSE CANCER SPENT THAT RESERVE TWO YEARS AGO ON NO-SODIUM ADDED BROTH AND JOY-FREE CHOCOLATE.” Little in-joke there for my thyca brethren.)

In the interests of preventing a return to cancer, I am taking a slightly excessive dosage of my hormone replacement. This prevents my confounded body - Heeeeeey, thyroid! what's going on over there? Hey! Thyroid! I’m talking to you! Why aren't you working, thyroid! Why do you never answer the telephone! Fuck it, thyroid! i'm shooting some wake up juice at you! Which is bad, because the wake up juice could sprout tissue somewhere and that tissue could have more cancer.

Yes, you can get thyroid cancer again.

Yes, you can. Even if you no longer have a thyroid, you can. Don’t you doubt! Don’t you go saying that’s not possible at me! I just explained how it is possible to you! If that wasn’t a thorough enough explanation, just accept that cancer is like that jackass predator that’s been stalking you in your dreams since 1986. It knows where you are. It knows where you are everywhere all of the time. It knows things about you that nobody else knows. Don’t even think it doesn’t. It isn’t because of western medicine’s culture of fear. It’s because cancer is genuinely horrible and awful and unfair and terrifying and it is that way all of the fucking time. And it hasn’t scrubbed out the damn toilet yet either.

So we are all tip toeing around the thyroid's abrupt departure over the course of a few hours on a working holiday in 2012. We must keep the pituitary in the dark on this issue for half a decade because it cannot be changed and life must go on. The dosage excess is basically gaslighting my pituitary gland into not sticking its nose in it. But the body is never a stasis and what was once a good number for you can suddenly be too high or too low and both situations have their undesirable qualities. Earlier last year my dosage was suddenly too high and I became insatiably hungry and paranoid. Paranoid about everything. Paranoid about hats. In early 2013, it was too low and I was exhausted and sad. In neither scenario do I sleep. Well, except when I don't want to, but that’s nothing new. Sleep won't fuck me, I’m not cool enough for sleep. Anyway, I think sleep might be doing cancer on the side.

And then there's my neck, my long graceful neck, ballerina lilt except now the line is interrupted by the cancer scar. Every photograph! Every job interview! every stilted conversation with a grade school friend who wasn't following me on Facebook at the time! My subliminal ballerina joke is ruined: but oh, well