Charlcie

One of the things about preparing for the radioactive iodine treatment is I have to be off of my thyroid medication until the treatment AND I have to eat a low-iodine diet. I had no idea what this meant until I delved into the internet and the materials my doctor gave me, but here it is in a nutshell: No dairy of any kind (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter). With really no suitable substitutes either. No commerical bread products. No bread from the grocery store. No sea food of any kind. No iodized salt, which at first seems simple (replace the salt in the shakers with non-iodized salt). However, that also means that you can't have salt in the products you buy too, which means practically everything. For example, I found out this weekend that red licorice has salt in it....grrr. I'm a constant food package reader now. No chocolate These two things (no thyroid meds and the new "diet") are sure to make me crazy. At the soccer games yesterday, the team went to Subway between ...

Hi all. I'm trying to get in the habit of writing on my own blog. I was on a good roll of blog writing for the CureSearch blog before I left on my leave for thyroid cancer surgery. Feel free to remind me from time to time (hey Charlcie, when are you going to write again?) if you'd like. Since the 19th, the last time I wrote on the blog, hmmmm.....Mom and Gary left after being here for three weeks (well, Mom for 3 weeks, Gary for 10 days) following my surgery. That was a big change for all of us. She was the nurse, cook, cleaner, laundry doer. Besides that, she's my mom, and I miss her a bunch. She was and continues to be one of my biggest cheerleaders in this cancer stuff. Other happenings.... Morgan had her first soccer tournament with the Vienna Storm, her new team. Although I think she did well for this being the first time she plays with a new travel team EVER (been with her other team almost 3 years), she was critical of herself. Actually, she is hard on herself when ...

Many of you know that I write posts for the CureSearch blog ( www.curesearchnccf.blogspot.com ). I've been meaning to start my own blog so here it is... I'm not sure exactly what my blog will be about but myself, my family, things I find interesting, etc. I think I'll start with thyroid cancer. Lately, I've not been doing much anything but preparing for, having, and then recovering from thyroid cancer surgery. I was diagnosed on July 14, 2008. I had a feeling the diagnosis was coming after the initial ultrasound. In fact, I asked Chris to go with me to the biopsy. When the pathologist walked in the room to deliver the results, I knew. When he said "you have papillary carcinoma," I looked at Chris and said, "I knew it!" He knew I had a bad feeling as well. On July 16th, I met with Dr. Enoch Sanders, my surgeon who would navigate me through all of this. I had a wonderful experience with him, not so much with the cancer. He took an hour with Chris and I...