August 2008

8/18 TSH Shot
8/19 TSH Shot
8/20 Tracer Pill Given
8/21 Scan
8/22 Protein test.

Scan Results: As I sit on the side of the scanner bed, a bunch of doctors ran in.  First an Asian lady.  She asked me was the side of my face swollen or giving my troubles.  Most of you know that I have been having pain in my Salivary Glands as of the past week maybe. That is what I told her.  That I literally woke up one day and it hurt like I laid on it wrong or got hit in the face by a toddler head (which is the truth) and hurt something.  It was initially sore without touching.  Then the pain improved and moved to the back of the jaw joint and improved each day only bugging me a bit when I ate or drank.  To date, I barely notice a problem and would have ordinarily ignored it from here.  In fact, I had forgotten about it entirely for the scan today.  So when they all piled in, I thought ****, my lung nodule is not benign!!  So then another doctor came in. He asked a few detailed questions like how exactly did it hurt when I first got my treatment (not at all unless I sucked on the sour balls).  Was your whole face swollen (yes and he told me this was normal). Had I had problems with be before this (no).  Etc.  I was pretty impressed with his questions. He left again, looked at the scan again and came back with two more doctors.  GREATTTTtttt I think.  He said he "thinks" I have a stone in my salivary gland that is holding up the material in there and preventing it from getting out.  Remember, the salivary is the only other organ that uptakes the iodine and eliminates it via SPIT.  That this light up could be caused by the stone, or an infection or any other number of benign things.  For now, he is NOT thinking (based on my answers) that its cancer there.  My protein test tomorrow will tell me either way if its thyroid regardless.  If that comes back negative than I'm Thyroid cell free.

Any uptake at all is not the "free and clear" message I wanted.  However the rest of the results:

Thyroid bed: no uptake
Neck: no uptake
Body from neck down: no uptake
Whole Body: no sign of tumors what so ever.

I have to see an ENT now for the salivary issues.  He said in the meantime drink lots of water, sometimes that itself helps resolve the issue.  He also suggested an antibiotic sometimes helps too so I started with an appointment this afternoon with my Family Doctor.

Protein Results: Doctor just called with my results.  ZERO protein detected (woo hoo).  With this sort of result, he is not worried about my salivary gland being cancer.  He will however give me a CT just to be safe.  The fact that it no longer hurts is promising also.  He thinks that maybe I was not very diligent at sucking the sour candy after my tracer given (true, true, true but how did he know?) that would have pulled most of that out of there.  He did say I had some antibodies and he expects that to go down with time.  OK, I think, what the hell is antibodies?  I was putting my kid on the bus and forgot to ask.  So, I went online to my favorite thyroid medical expert and he said this....

When a patient has TgAb (thyroglobulin antibodies) detected, it is not unusual to see a temporary rise in the TgAb level during the first six months following radioiodine therapy. This may even be a sign of the effectiveness of the treatment. Usually, TgAb values return to the original value or below after six months.

My other thyroid cancer survivor friend said I could have had Hashimoto's disease (thyroid thing) and I may always have those antibodies present but it has no reference to cancer.  Woo Hoo again.

So the results are anti-climatic with all the extra testing lingering but still.  Blood says no cancer and thats good enough or me.