To celebrate our 2-year anniversary of being a nonprofit, Lacuna Loft is bringing back our top 31 articles from our archives! This is Flashback #17: 8 Years Of No Good Cancer, written by Michele. These 31 articles are the best of the best and we’re very happy to share them with you again! The countdown continues tomorrow!
….It’s been eight years since I put on the necklace, eight years since I felt the lump under my skin. And it’s been almost eight years since I first heard those words: “Michele, it looks like you have thyroid cancer.”
It was a Friday afternoon in late November, two months after my wedding and the day before my husband and I were planning to go pick out our Christmas tree. My doctor said those words, and then she made two calls, and just like that, I had appointments with a surgeon to remove my thyroid the day after New Year’s and an endocrinologist to manage my care forevermore after the surgery.
My husband and I drove home in mostly stunned silence, but for my confused questioning: “I thought I was doing everything right. I run. I don’t smoke. I eat blueberries, for god’s sake.” I knew all too well even before that day that cancer doesn’t discriminate, but I still never expected that it would happen to me.
My thyroidectomy was a little more than a month later, but on November 30, 2007, I became a cancer survivor. I felt physically just the same as I had the day before — which is to say, completely fine — but my life had been separated into two distinct periods, one before cancer and one after…
……
