“In my dream, daddy had cancer and he died.”

This is what our 10-year-old son whimpered to us a few days ago. He woke up feeling really disturbed and sad because of this dream of his. All we could do was comfort him and tell him that his dad is okay, and everything will be okay.

This is my fault. I wasn’t more careful about discussing certain things around him. Our plan was to tell the kids once a surgery was scheduled, that daddy needed his thyroid taken out to make sure he doesn’t get sicker. And once the biopsy results come in, to discuss whatever the results are with them then. He must have heard me talking about it in secretive tones and picked up terms that sounded familiar. He has a friend whose father passed recently due to cancer, and he took that to heart. He always was a sensitive child.

My husband has six nodules resting on both of his thyroid lobes. They use a system called Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data Systems (TIRADS) to determine the risk of cancer based on the characteristics of the nodules on ultrasound. Out of the six, two of them scored TIRADS 4 (suspicious,) and one, the naughtiest one, a TIRADS 5. This naughty nodule has an 86% chance of being malignant, especially since the way it looks (taller than wide, has microcalcifications) is also indicative of malignancy. While we are holding on to the >20% chance of it being benign, we are also preparing our hearts and minds for a cancer diagnosis and the many ways this is going to change how we live our lives.

They call thyroid cancer the “friendliest cancer”, wherein usually upon diagnosis it is still in stage 1 and that means that surgery is curative. Catch it early enough, there is usually no metastases and it is contained in the thyroid. All they need to do is take out the whole damn thing, put you on maintenance medication, keep an eye on you annually, and you should be able to live life as close to normal as possible. If malignancy is determined, then you go through Radioactive Iodine Therapy – which his ENT refused to discuss without a final diagnosis. There’s no point in talking about it until we are sure it is even a necessity. I concur, and yet I’ve already researched to high heavens about it anyway.

I guess naming a cancer the “friendliest cancer” is supposed to make you feel better. It’s supposed to reassure you that you’re not going to die, you’ll be okay, and that it could be worse.

It could be worse. I never found comfort in those words. So I’m supposed to feel better about my current situation because a totally hypothetical situation could be taking place at this moment instead? Weird. How abstract. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make me feel good but I guess it does put things in perspective. It gives us a chance to change certain things so that things don’t get worse. To nip things in the bud, and the bud here are stupid cancer cells whose only purpose is to kill and destroy.

We’re currently waiting for his cardiologist to clear him for surgery. The ENT says he feels the situation is time-sensitive, so once cleared we’ll schedule and proceed with it by the second week of September. After the surgery, a biopsy will be done to determine whether it’s malignant or not, and if it is, to stage it and help create a treatment plan.

“Friendly” cancer or not, it shakes your reality when someone you can’t live without is touched by something that can take them away. He didn’t have symptoms, and it was caught totally by accident. Every day I will thank God for that person who looked at his chest x-ray and said “your chest is clear… but your neck is weird. You should have that looked at.” A repeat x-ray, CT Scan, and one ultrasound later, here we are. Moral of the story: get an annual physical exam, folks.

I pray that this time of testing proves our faith instead of shakes it. We never think it could happen to us, until it does. And when it does, the most you can do is dig those heels in, steel your spirit, and keep your eyes on the Maker, not the mountain.