as if it wasnt bad enough...

So, along with just having lost my baby, I have also just lost my thyroid. Without my thyroid, my body can not produce or control my hormones, which happen to be going crazy as it is. To be fair, the Doctors put me on hormone replacement medications following my second surgery. One pill, three times a day. It's hard to say how well it is working seeing as I feel like a menopausal woman. Hot flashes followed by extreme chills, mood swings (sorry family) and weight loss (this, I will not complain about). Add to that the diet that I have started that does not allow iodine, it's hard to fathom just how restrictive this diet could be, but trust me. It is. No dairy, No eggs, no bread with over 20mg of sodium (i.e. no bread), no prepared food, no condiments, no meat (this doesn't hurt, I have been a vegetarian for 15 years) EVERYTHING must be homemade from scratch from a limited amount of acceptable ingredients. I understand why I have to be so restricted but it doesn't mean I like it.
On the other hand I have discovered that I am capable of making and baking from scratch, I have come up with some rather interesting meals :) but at this point, food is fuel.
I will share one amazing recipe that I found and I love. It is a simple salad (no spinach, it's restricted) with a dressing that consists of 1/3 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup balsamic vinaigrette, a couple tbs. of sugar and 1/2 cup of mashed strawberries ( I put mine in a food processor) top the salad with the dressing, some extra quartered strawberries, a handful of blueberries and top it off with some toasted slivered almonds (unsalted). Delicious!

I take it back, I DO have cancer.

It took me a bit to recover from my last post. I have so much I want to say about my birth experience but that will have to wait for another day. I guess I am not ready to completely relive those memories.



Moving on.

2 weeks after giving birth I went to meet with my surgeon. Another ultrasound was performed with the same conclusion. surgery was imminent. A biopsy was not performed because it would not affect the final decision,it would have to be removed. The plan was to remove only the right half of my thyroid, this would enable my body to continue to produce hormones from the remaining left side.

I was ensured that I had an 85% chance that this would not be cancer. The surgeon would remove the right side, send it off to the lab to be frozen and biopsied while I was still under anesthesia and if it was cancerous he would remove the left side as well.



January 12th was my surgery. I had to be there at 5:30 in the morning so I kissed my boys goodbye, sure that this was the last time I would ever see them, I was positive I wasn't going to make it through surgery.



I was prepped and given some good medications, I kissed my mom and my best friend good bye and was rolled off to the operating room. The next thing I knew I was in the recovery room surrounded by my husband, my mom and my best friend. "Do I have cancer" I asked? and I was so happy to hear them say "no". What a huge weight off of my shoulders.

I spent the night in the hospital in a pain med induced stupor. I facebooked to all of my friends that I was "cancer free.. yay me!" and was released the following day. Recovery was miserable. There really is no way to explain how it feels to have your throat cut open and have an organ removed (I'm envisioning the surgeon standing on my chest yanking with all his might) other than to say it was miserable. I did get a good nights sleep my first night home (thank you sleeping pills) and was woken in the morning by my husband who wanted me to take a phone call... It was my surgeon.

He had a pathology result in front of him that said, with further testing, My results came back as follicular thyroid cancer and they would need me back to remove the other side. I am one of the 2 patients a year that he sees this happen to . lucky me. The last thing I want to do is relive this nightmare, I felt like I had already beaten the odds just surviving the initial surgery (yes, I know I am being overly dramatic, that's who I am.) And now I had to do it again? Yes, in 2 weeks. So I did. and I survived. second verse same as the first. It was miserable.

That gets me back up to where I am now. I had an appointment with a endocrine oncologist named Dr. Carey. She met with me and gave me ALOT of information about this disease, its treatment and prognosis. Over the period of an hour and a half I was told just about everything I need to know and I was sent home. I have to begin a low-iodine diet to prepare for a treatment of radioactive iodine. This radioactive iodine will go into my body and seek out any remaining thyroid tissue and kill it. This is also how we will see if and/or where the cancer may have spread. The prognosis and treatment are great, there is a 95% cure rate, which really says nothing to me considering the odds I have beaten in the last few months. More waiting. and starving :).

Follicular thyroid cancer:
*Peak onset ages 40 through 60 (I am 30)
*Females more common than males by 3 to 1 ratio
*Prognosis directly related to tumor size [less than 1.0 cm (3/8 inch) good prognosis] *(my tumor was 3.7cm)
*Rarely associated with radiation exposure
*Spread to lymph nodes is uncommon (~10%)
*Invasion into vascular structures (veins and arteries) within the thyroid gland is common (*this hashappened with me, we are not sure yet how extensive the invasion is)
*Distant spread (to lungs or bones) is uncommon, but more common than with papillary cancer
*Overall cure rate high (near 95% for small lesions in young patients), decreases with advanced age

"If I could have, I would have stayed pregnant forever"

If I could have I would have stayed pregnant forever, simply so I would never have had to let him go. Despite my hopes that I was carrying a girl, I wanted this little boy more than anything.

That being said, I did not think that I could handle carrying my baby to term knowing that I was going to have to watch him die. It's that simple, it's that selfish. I didn't think I could handle it. I want to be able to say , it would be too hard on my boys to put them through an entire 9 months with no baby at the end, or, I have to take care of myself and this thyroid needs to be taken care of, or, It would be too hard on my body or my marriage.. I could come up with a million excuses but the truth is, I couldnt stand the thought of watching my baby die.

December 2ND 2009 I checked into the hospital to begin the induction.

I gave birth, after a long and agonizing labor, on December 4Th 2009.

Benjamin Michael, My angel was born.

His perfect body was only 10 inches long and weighed only 14 ounces . How could it be that he looked so perfect and yet he couldn't stay with us?


I was able to have and hold and love my baby for 5 hours before his heart grew quiet. Although I had thought this would be a terrible experience, watching my baby die, I feel so lucky and so blessed to have had this time with him, if there was any way that he could feel my love, I have no doubt that he felt it. I tucked him into my gown and put his heart on mine, and told him over and over again how much I loved him and how badly I wanted him to stay with me. This is a moment that will never leave my memory. I am so thankful that he lived even for that short period of time. There is no other place I would have rather had him be when he took his last breath than in his mothers arms. It was also the deepest pain I have ever felt.



the next couple of weeks were so surreal.

Planning a funeral for my baby? How could this be happening?

Trying to keep a strong face for the 3 boys I had waiting for me at home was close to impossible but I did it. for the most part.

I had no idea how to interact with my friends and family, I wanted to be strong and be able to carry on so I put on a brave face and tried to convince everyone that I was OK. Inside I was dying. I'm sure they thought I was crazy. and they were probably right.

"Has anyone ever told you.."

In order to tell my story, I have to go back to the beginning. September 10th 2009 was a day that I thought could possibly be my worst, little did I know how insignificant it was going to become. This was the day I met with my OBGYN for my first pregnancy checkup. I was pregnant with my 4th child. after the initial intake my nurse practitioner said to me "has anyone ever told you that you have an enlarged thyroid?" and my answer was "No...why?" It turns out that my thyroid was indeed very large and I was to go in immediately for an ultrasound. What became of the ultrasound is that there was a large "tumor" on the right side of my thyroid along with a smaller cyst with calcification in it. on the left side was another small tumor. I then met with my surgeon and was told that it may or may not be cancer but we will have to wait for the baby to be born before we can go any further with it. Along with the severe anxiety that came from learning that I may have cancer, came the sadness that this could quite possibly consume me for the duration of my pregnancy, being that this was my fourth and final child I had hoped to enjoy every second of it.



after a week or so my anxiety calmed down and I was able to go back to focusing on my pregnancy. I was trying to convince myself that being the mother of 4 boys was unique and that it was something that I wanted. but truth be told, I was secretly hoping for a girl. This secret became very well known the closer I got to my ultrasound. I had taken a gender predictor test (OK, maybe I took 3 or 4) and got the result: girl. I had cute little pink clothes for her and was designing her room in my mind. She was going to be my little princess.



November 17, 2009 was the big day. My husband, myself and our 7 year old son headed in to the doctors office to officially recieve the good news. The ultrasound tech took measurements and told us all how active our baby was. She told us that our little peanut was being stubborn and keeping it's legs together and then suddenly - "oh! there it is... It's a boy!" One of my greatest regrets will always be the dissapointment I felt when I heard those 3 words. It's a boy? I spent the rest of the ultrasound feeling sorry for myself, I would never have a daughter. As soon as the ultrasound was done I began texting my friends and family the "bad" news. I kissed my husband and son goodbye and headed in to the exam room to meet with my doctor.



"There was something wrong. It's not good".

Those are the words I remember, those are the only words I remember.



I should have seen the signs that something was wrong. Why did I not get to see his face in the ultrasound? Why didnt I see her measure his head?



"Your baby is anencephalic." anen-what? I had not heard this term before and didnt know what it meant.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) describes the presentation of this condition as follows:

A baby born with anencephaly is usually blind, deaf, unconscious, and unable to feel pain. Although some individuals with anencephaly may be born with a main brain stem, the lack of a functioning cerebrum permanently rules out the possibility of ever gaining consciousness. Reflex actions such as breathing and responses to sound or touch occur.


My baby was growing, but his brain was not.

We had a choice to make. Do we have an abortion? do we induce and deliver now or do we go full term? I was not willing to have an abortion. So how do I know what to do? I dont want to do either, I dont want to be going through this.

If we go full term our baby boy could be still born or live for hours or even days, nobody knew.

If we chose to induce, our baby would probably not survive his birth.



We agonized over our choices for the next week, during this time we met with a genetic counselor who gave us a lot of information on genetic deformities, None of which I can pass on given the state of mind I was in.

Doctors, nurses, friends and family assured us that there was nothing we could have done to prevent this (other than taking high doses of folic acid prior to and during the first 3 weeks of pregnancy- HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME THIS?!)

But we were still left wondering, running through the what if's, and trying to figure out what we did to have this happen to us and to our sweet little boy.