halfway there

I'm already finished with my appointments for today. Amazingly, my surgeon was nearly on time for my appointment -- it was scheduled for 10:45 and he walked into the room at 11:30. Last October, the wait was literally hours long.

So: bloodwork looks good, but thyroglobulin (Tg) results were still pending. My chest x-ray was still pending also. My ultrasound identified a couple of nodes "of interest" but the radiologist declined to biopsy them now. This u/s is considered my post-operative baseline, and I'll come back in 6 months and do this whole routine again, and they'll decide at that point whether or not to biopsy those nodes and if I'll need further treatment.

I'm almost relaxed. If the Tg comes back very low, I will be able to relax for real. I am happy I didn't have a needle stuck in my neck, but I would be happier if they had biopsied those nodes and found no cancer. I know that negative biopsies are not necessarily definitive, so I can live with "come back in 6 months."

Tomorrow's appointment will be interesting. I find myself strangely disarmed by these doctors. I have a million questions on the way in, and then they look at me and say something that makes me realize that asking my million questions is not going to be helpful. So I don't ask. Then later I wish I had asked! How annoying. Today, I was so relieved about the u/s that I didn't ask the surgeon why no one in his practice answered my email about the change to my u/s schedule. I think I'll fill out a patient comment card on that issue... it's the only real problem I've had dealing with these people, and as issues go, it's pretty trivial.

So for my next appointment I will make a list of questions that I want covered, and hopefully I will stick with them while I'm in there. And then I can go home and not think about this stuff for 6 months or so.