The elephant in the room

UP UNTIL the fourth grade, Mama would wrap my head in a towel before going to sleep. Doing this helped me avoid the effects of dawn temperature changes. On days when this ritual was forgotten, I would wake up sneezing, teary-eyed and runny-nosed until about 8am when the sun was high in the sky and the temperature stable. Allergic rhinitis is in fact is how Mama eventually declared me as her living barometer.

It was not surprising then that in moving to Iceland (where you could expect four seasons in one day) I encountered difficulties in adjusting to the weather. This peaked a few months ago when it became so bad that I had to sleep sitting up. It scared me enough to make an appointment with a doctor.

Two weeks later, there I was twiddling my thumbs and trying to compose in my head a litany of symptoms (half of them already gone in the two weeks waiting to see the doctor) in Icelandic. When I walked into the examination room, greeting me was a framed "American Academy of Physicians" certificate so off went the carefully researched Icelandic medical terms and I happily rattled off medicalese in English. So satisfying...but I digress.

My fifty-ish doctor ( age being a good thing otherwise I would´ve walked out) promptly scribbled off a prescription for a nasal corticosteroid spray. Everything all clear and well-diagnosed. Or so, we thought until on my way out I happened to mention if it would be alright if he checked this probable lump on my throat. I was half-embarrassed about it because it could just very well be an advancing second chin. Except that, with sonogram in hand he turns around and says, "Yes, there seems to be a well-defined mass."

Uh, okay.

Since then, I have been to blood tests, ultrasounds and biopsies which in summation arrived at an unsatisfactory conclusion: thyroid carcinoma. It is supposed to be papillary, the curable kind, but the biopsy report also mentioned undefined cellular mutations which can only be classified and identified by an actual specimen (and not through cells sucked out by a thin, abnormally long needle).

The Big C is a family thing and more than a few in every generation gets initiated into the club. I just never thought that I would be the first in my batch.

Well, there it is. The elephant in the room that I have never as yet publicly discussed except with the few who I thought ought to know directly from me. It could be that I cannot call everyone who matters seeing that overseas calls are expensive and everyone´s just spread out all over the world. So, I blog instead.

On September 8, I will for the first time go under the knife. After that auspicious date I will go on sick leave. Time on my hands and hopefully enough blogging hours will allow me to add to the meager first-person information on thyroid cancer in the internet. It will also be my self-purging, a therapeutic addition to my post-op recovery. Besides, writing has always been my life and allows me to connect from the old world, cold world.

I hope you keep me company in this new adventure, another fork in the path.