Partial Thyroid, Chance Of Flurries

Tuesday, my next-to-last day of school this week, I had a half-day. Yep. Those of you so inclined, shake your fist at my two-and-a-half day workweek. If you don't like it, join me in the trenches of teaching and enjoy your own snow days. Plus the added benefit of having kids tell you how to style your hair, how you're going to give back the contraband you take from them, hit you every now and then, steal your $10 for an overpriced fundraising candle, use the GermX you buy for the classroom as hair gel, and tell you that you suck all the fun out of life. Welcome to my privileged life!

I had to leave early for a doctor's appointment with my primary Doc. He had called me Monday after school, to explain that he had been on vacation, but that he wanted to make sure I had gotten the results of my thyroid fine-needle biopsy. We chatted for a moment, and I told him that I had finagled an appointment out of his staff for Tuesday, to get some specific information on the thyroid issue.

After waiting 30 minutes past my appointment time, fending off a young toddler who made a beeline for me every time her dad set her down, and a 10-year-old whose mother decided to plop down in the row of two chairs back-to-back with my row of two chairs, I was called into the inner sanctum. Seriously. There was NO ONE in that waiting room except us three groups. Can I not be left alone from germy toddler hands grabbing at my knees and purse, and a pretween coughing swine flu all over my shoulder because he was not taught manners and climbed up on his knees and hunched over the back of my purse-chair, nosing into my business?

Even after this nerve-fraying experience, my blood pressure was 112/72, so I decided to start taking that new blood pressure prescription I got filled last week. Doc popped in and informed me that the benign tissue found in the fine-needle thyroid biopsy on Dec. 22 was good news. He further stated that he had gone down to the lab and chatted with Dr. Smith, who is the one who stuck me, and that they looked at both thyroid ultrasounds, and concluded that my nodule had not changed in four years, and that he did not think I needed imminent surgery as recommended by young Dr. WhizKid, the ENT. But he said it in a polite, professional manner. And he said he would like me to see an endocrinologist at Barnes Hospital for a second opinion, to set my mind at ease, and to make a decision based on all the information.

Sooo...I am currently on sabbatical from my thyroid, until Feb. 4, upon which time I will begin obsessing again, depending on the new recommendation. The new doc specializes in cancer of the breast and thyroid, and in benign breast tumors. So I'm thinkin' he will know his way around a benign thyroid nodule.

And, on the way out, the girl making my specialist appointment told me that she had thyroid surgery at Barnes for a nodule, and had half of her thyroid taken out, and that she does not even have to take medicine for it, and that it was not painful or difficult. She was younger than me, and had a thin scar on her neck that I did not notice until I looked for it. So I left there with a better outlook than I have had since mid-November.

Did you hear that there are snow flurries in Monday's forecast?