Part 2: "Inside the lump ... it was my twin."

(If you would like to start this Thy-light Saga from the beginning, please see Part 1: Domo Arigato Hashimoto's)



We left off at the part where I was going to get a biopsy on my nodule. Now, like I said before, my body loves growing nodules so I had already had a biopsy before on a different part of my body, and it wasn't so bad. So, I was thinking, this will be fine, I can go in for the biopsy myself, put a band-aid on it, and go back to work. Wham Bam thank you ma'am. My mom didn't seem to think that my plan was very solid, and told me that she was going to come up and either go with me, or stay with the kids.

Fuuuuuuu-hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.I let her come. Jake very nicely took the day off to come with me. Whatevs. It would be fine.

So, we go to the hospital, and because it was in the height of all of that crazy flu, and we were at a women's hospital where babies are delivered every five seconds, they were super sensitive to any sort of sniffles and coughs. Upon check-in, we were ordered to wear masks at all times. Can I just tell you how weird that makes you feel? I swear that everyone thought we had some sort of crazy disease. It did not put me in the right mindset to get some needles up in my neck.

Anyway, we get to the special biopsy room (not sure what the correct name for that would be- Bermes?) and it is all dimly lit. The doctor's assistant greets me warmly, and grabs my hand, and talks to me in a voice that suggests that she is trying to be calming. This is the point where I wonder if I should be freaking out about this. It is just a needle in the lump, right?

Well, when the doctor comes in with a tray of needles that seem pretty thick, I realize that I may have thought wrong about this. They then explain to me that they will be putting the needle in, and then moving it around into different directions to gain tissue from all angles. Supercool.

Personally, the thing that made this whole thing that much worse, was the angle at which your head and neck have to be positioned so that you are in prime placement. It is not comfortable to lay this way in general, let alone have 20 needles being thrashed around your neck. You are basically putting a pillow under your neck and letting your head dangle backwards. AWKWARD!

Well, needless to say it was an uncomfortable experience. They ended up putting 20 needles in my neck, because they saw that I not only had a giant nodule on the left side of my thyroid, but the right side was full of nodules. Whenever a doctor makes a new development mid-procedure, it is never good for a patients imagination. Especially when your imagination is filled with images from googling on the internet.

Toward the end I was trying with all of my might to hold my shit together (which I did, BTW), but I have to give a shout-out to my masked Baby Daddy, he gave me intermittent leg taps when he could, and also the doctor's assistant whose weird voice tones and hand holding seemed to all make sense by the end.

And, of course, the biopsy results were negative for cancer, but they did confirm I had Hashimoto's. You would think that would be the end of the Thy-light Saga, but oh no, there is more. The way things are going nowadays, there may be around five parts. The next installment will include endocrinologists and heart palpitations. Riveting stuff.