Something you never expect to hear...

What started out as something that I thought was probably minor, turned into a diagnosis I didn't plan on hearing and took me a bit off guard. I was diganosed with papillary carcinoma (thyroid cancer) on March 19th.

I guess this is the way the world works. Many times, people find out they have cancer when they are having something totally separate checked out. Who knows how long it would have been before I found out about the nodule on my thyroid and subsequent cancer if I didn't' have any trouble swallowing. I guess this is someone's way of telling you (God, whoever) that there is something wrong in your body and you need to have someone check it out. I read a blog the other day on a cancer survivor website, and a friend or relative of a survivor told her that only special people get cancer. Maybe that is the case. I beat a lot of odds to get where I am now - papillary cancer is much more common in women than men, more common in older women, multiple nodules are better than single nodules, most cold nodules are benign, 90% of all nodules are benign, etc. It is hard to feel bad or sorry for myself for what happened to me especially since things could have been much, much worse and I could have had a cancer that was very aggressive with a less positive prognosis. Once this is all over and if everything goes as planned, do I even call myself a cancer survivor. As good as it would feel to put myself in a group of people that endured and persevered, did I really do any of those things? I did not have to go through treatments that others do and have to deal with more of the serious ramifications.

I always need to find a lesson in everything that happens to me. It allows me to better my life through all the experiences that I go through - good or bad. Maybe this experience is telling me to wake up and not take life for granted. Go out and take some risks. Do my part to make the world a better place. Raise money for worthy charities. I always look to Lance Armstrong and look to him for strength and hope as I assume millions of people have done when they hear the diagnosis of cancer. Hopefully, when this experience is over, it will just be a blip on the radar of my life. One of life's minor nuisances that I had to take care of.