the plan

Okay, so first of all I have to send out a BIG THANK YOU to all of you who have either left a comment here, on FB, talked to me at church, or sent a card! You people are amazing!! Thank you for each and every kind word and compassion and generosity and promise for your prayers. I know without prayer, we wouldn't be able to handle this "bump" (pun intended) as well as we have. I am overhwhelmed at the love outpouring from our family, church family, and friends! It is simply amazing. I do not feel deserving of it! So thank you:)

Now, I figured I might explain some more details of our plan to take care of this thing I have. We are planning on having surgery next Tuesday, the 24th. The surgeon is going to go in and take the right lobe of my thyroid out completely, hand it off to a pathologist, who will examine it to make sure that the biopsy results line up with what they see under the microscope. If the diagnosis is confirmed (which we're very sure it will be) the left side of my thyroid will be taken out. You may be wondering, why can't they just take the nodule out?? We asked the same question and found out that the nodule is not hanging off the side of my thyroid. That was how I had pictured it, but that was wrong. It is embedded within the thyroid, and cutting it out would produce a lot of bleeding and just not be very good over all. So that's just not an option.

One area that the surgeon must be very careful to work around is around my vocal cords and nerves. They run either right behind or inside the thyroid (I can't remember) and so she will be extra careful not to damage those. When all is said and done, I'll have a scar right above my collar bone and no thyroid left. We feel this is the best plan because this type of thyroid cancer tends to be multi-centric, meaning showing up in more than one spot. Leaving any part of the thyroid would just give it a chance to show up later in life.

I'm going to spend the night Tuesday in the hospital and go home Wednesday. I'm not sure how I'll feel afterwards, but a family friend that went through this same procedure said it wasn't any worse than having your wisdom teeth out. That was good to hear!

Of course, I have started thyroid supplements already and will continue to be on them for the rest of my life, but that is a small inconvenience for peace of mind. Already, we were blessed with the first prescription costing nothing!! I don't know if it will always be that way, but that was just awesome!

Phase 2 of my treatment starts a little later down the road and involves a whole lot more preparation, but I'll get into that when the time comes. (Let's just say I might be glowing green!) Right now, I'm trying to take things one step at a time. First, we need to get through surgery.

I have a few specific prayer requests if you feel moved to pray for us:

Please pray that the kids adjust well and sleep well when they stay will other people next week. It's going to be a rough week on them. Pray that Miss M especially will be okay with her mommy being down for awhile.
Please pray that the surgery would go without problems and everything will be straightforward for the surgeon.
Please pray that we can use this opportunity to show God's providence and love. That we wouldn't use this to get more attention for ourselves, but always point back to HIM.

Thank you for your prayers, thoughts, help, everything! I think that's all that's new for now. I must be off to bed:)
For His Glory!
T and family