A Lump in the Road

I was waiting to post about this until it was totally resolved, one way or the other.

Several weeks ago, Chris noticed a lump in his neck.  It was painful when he pushed on it and it was starting to affect him in other ways -- headaches, restricting his breathing, etc.  It was getting worse over the weekend so we made a trip to the ER.  There, they performed an ultrasound and discovered a mass on his thyroid.  The ER doctor said it might be nothing or it might be, well, something.  Something like cancer.  Of course my brain totally tuned out about 90% of masses being benign; all I could think about was that other 10%.

Talk about a punch in the gut.  This past year hasn't exactly been an easy one for us and at that moment, it was just another straw on an already broken back.

More tests (some of them terribly painful, like the needle biopsy) and a referral to an ENT later...  The doctor said it "looked" benign, but he couldn't say for sure so we would monitor it and re-evaluate after 6 months.  

This was not what we wanted to hear.  At this point, even something as simple as sneezing was excruciatingly painful for Chris.  The size of the mass (4 cm) was just at the threshold where they would remove the affected part of the thyroid, even if it's not cancerous, and after hearing how it was affecting his daily life, the doctor agreed to do surgery.  

Chris had a partial thyroidectomy on the day before Thanksgiving.  Happy holidays, right? ;-)  After 3 1/2 hours in the O.R., the doctor came out and said they still thought it was benign, but they couldn't be 100% sure because it had "cancerous looks."  They had closed him up for the time being and the pathologist would run some more in-depth tests.  If it came back cancerous, Chris would have another surgery to remove the other half of his thyroid.  

We just received the test results and the mass is DEFINITELY benign!

What a relief!  I just don't think either of us could have handled hearing "the C word."  Chris is healing up wonderfully and looks forward to sneezing without pain soon :-).