The Surgery Date Is Set...

The office of Tanya's primary surgeon (Dr. Lee) has let us know that November 17th is the day.  Tanya is slated for surgery at 7:30 AM (we get to arrive at 5:30 AM).  It is further out than we had hoped, but at least it is now scheduled.

Spleen Ultrasound Results

We heard back from Dr. Lee (Tanya's surgeon) this afternoon with the results of the spleen ultrasound, and it is good news! The spot that Dr. Lee saw on Tanya's spleen from the chest CT appears to be a cyst, and nothing that needs to be worried about right now. We will have it looked at again in 6 months to see if anything has changed. For now it is one less thing to worry about.

An Interesting Article

We came across this article, 'Talking to someone with cancer', in the USA Weekend today. It's an interesting read.

Courage

Courage is looking fear right in the eye and saying, “Get the hell out of my way, I’ve got things to do.” 
- Author Unknown

Still Waiting...

We are still waiting to hear back on the results of the Spleen Ultrasound that Tanya had on Thursday. We hope to find out the results early this week, and also get confirmation on the date for surgery. I will post more as soon as I know more.

ENT Appointment (Dr. Hsieh)

Had our appointment with Dr. Hsieh today.  He confirmed that he has been in contact with Dr. Lee and that the two of them will assist each other in performing the thyroidectomy and modified neck dissection.  He also did a laryngoscopy to look at Tanya's throat and vocal chords.  The laryngoscopy wasn't as bad as either Tanya or I imagined (but still not all that fun), and only took a few minutes.

He will now coordinate with Dr. Lee to set a time for the surgery...  Hope to have an update on that soon.

Spleen Ultrasound

Finally heard back about setting up the spleen ultrasound.  It's scheduled for Thursday morning.

Ear Nose and Throat (Dr. Hsieh)

Heard back from Dr. Lee's office this afternoon with information on which Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist they want Tanya to see.  Looks like it's Dr. Hsieh (pronounced Shay).  Dr. Lee has talked with Dr. Hsieh and he knows Tanya's history.  Tanya was able to schedule an appointment for Tuesday morning.  Sounds like he will do a laryngoscopy and maybe a biopsy as well.

We are still waiting on when and where the spleen ultrasound will take place.

Still waiting

We hope to hear today about which Ear Nose and Throat specialist Tanya will see.  We got a call from one yesterday and Tanya set up an appointment, but then heard back from Dr. Lee's office regarding seeing someone else.  Hope to have the confusion cleared up today.

We also learned yesterday that Dr. Lee has requested a Ultrasound of Tanya's spleen...  Waiting to hear when this will take place as well.

The CT and Waiting...

We got the CT scan done last Tuesday (October 2), which Tanya said was much better than the MRI (only 15 minutes compared to the 45 minutes for the MRI and with a lot less noise). We then had to wait until last Friday (October 7) to meet with Dr. Lee again to get the results. That was the longest few days in history.


At our appointment we learned that as far as the radiologist and the doctors could determine, the cancer had NOT moved into the lung. What they saw was a granuloma, probably from an infection in the past. I think Tanya and I both breathed for the first time in a few days at that news.


Dr. Lee then told us that the CT scan showed something on Tanya's spleen... She said that she hadn't researched a lot on that, but that she wasn't aware of thyroid cancer moving to the spleen. She is going to do some more research, and may have Tanya do another CT to see more detail. Hopeful a biopsy will not be required...


Dr. Lee also told us that she was talking with an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist who would handle the neck dissection (Dr. Lee will do the thyroidectomy and assist the other surgeon with the neck). Once she determined who she wants to work with, she will provide us the information so that we can setup an appointment with him.  Hopefully this will be the last appointment before setting a date for surgery.