A&P (Awake & Paranoid)

I have to confess that on most (if not every) night since the diagnosis, I've taken a drug to help me sleep. I did not take it last night because I was going to bed late and feeling super sleepy - also, because I had a race in the morning (a 5k, my last of nine I wanted to complete in 2009).

Some massive thunderstorms have now hit (it's 4am in these parts) and my dog feels that it's necessary to be awake and pacing, leading to me (her mom) being awake, too. Jim gamely attempted to come out to the couch himself, but usually once this happens I'm pretty much awake.

This thyroid diagnosis, along with other bodily woes, is weighing on my mind now. While this is my first experience of having cancer (and, I hope it's the last - over the long, long life that I endeavor to live), it's not the only really disturbing health scare I've had, not the only set of symptoms I struggled with until a diagnosis was made, and not the only time I've fixated on my health. While I hate the idea of being "sick," when I am sick, I do tend to become extremely vigilant and knowledgeable about my condition, which is something of a positive, I guess.

So on Wednesday, T+1 (thyroid diagnosis date + 1) another doctor (separate to the thyroid diagnosis) told me I had adenomas in my small intestine - what he said were rare and precancerous growths (rare to have them in the small intestine). He told me to worry about the thyroid first and then to follow up with him for more testing (but who can say if it'll be helpful) maybe in a year or two. The conversation was quite discouraging - he made these growths sound both destined to be cancer and simultaneously extremely rare, undetectable, and beyond scientific knowledge when they occur in the small intestine. I was later corrected, told that adenomas are benign until they turn into something else, which can take forever and can happen never. So that comforted me a bit, but I'm still going to follow up before a year or two has elapsed. I'm getting varying stories from people about these things. It's good to know in the short-term I'm not the ticking time bomb I thought I might be.

Elsewhere in my body, I'm experiencing another pain tonight. Those who are familiar with my somewhat substantial history of medical woes (four surgeries so far in the life of this 35-year-old) might be able to guess at where that pain is. For now, I'll just say that I once had emergency, life-saving surgery on the organ system that's giving me pain. Given the whole thyroid thing, how I wouldn't let that go because I knew something was wrong, I'm feeling like I need to start actively following this other thing through, too. I would chalk this up to late-night paranoia (which surely plays a role), but this has been bothering me for a couple of years, on and off - and I've been worried, on and off, all through. I've been to a couple of doctors who said I was probably fine, but really weren't concerned given my age and overall good health. And then meanwhile, I have only worried while the pain was bad and then stopped worrying when the pain went away - which is sort of how I was with the thyroid, too.

I am tempted to follow this pain up as well, and be extremely tenacious, on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm tempted to shut this down, insist to myself that whatever it is probably has an explanation that is not cancer, and deal with the thyroid first. And yet this worry nags at me.

So tonight (this morning, actually), I wonder, can a little bit of a lesson be dangerous? If I know that my instinct was right on about my thyroid - that there was something wrong in tham thar thyroid parts, based on a knowledge of my own body, coupled with some obvious symptoms - it stands to reason I should listen to my gut more often when I have pain, coupled with some obvious symptoms. Further, I know that last time I had problems in this other area, I knew something was wrong - I just didn't know what to call it (by the way, it wasn't cancer).

And yet, what if my gut is paranoid (in addition to containing adenomas)?

Oh, those self-sabotaging what-ifs!! Even as I write this, I know that it's wrong. How can body knowledge be thrown aside? Perhaps that's just the voice of evidence-based, Western medicine, coupled with a dose of my own (how you say? Skepticism? Insecurity?) responding to those crazy little things I have called instincts.

As I type away, outstretched as I am on the couch with laptop topping my lap, my dog has just decided the thunder has subsided enough for her to join me on the couch. She rests her warm chest up on my legs and then gingerly steps over them and attempts to both curl up and, at the same time, watch the window for signs that the storm might need her immediate attention again. After about a minute of this, the storm wins, she's off the couch, off my leg, and back to standing by the window, ears pricked up.

Perhaps I should take a lesson from her right now. It's great that she's so vigilant, but freaking out is certainly not helping her to get the rest she needs. Perhaps I don't have to pace and stare and stay awake, either, to be vigilant (aside from when my dog makes me). I'll call this other specialist on Monday to set something up and, until then, I'll try my best to let it go.