Catholic Ragemonkey

Going to be Silent for Awhile
Not that I have been saying a whole lot on this blog lately, but I think I am going to be not posting much for awhile now. I know that I mentioned to you CRM readers that I was going in for surgery on November 18. It went fine. My throat was really raw for 4-5 days and the back of my neck, the muscles, really ached. I have a funky swollen section of my neck, so I cannot button collar. I was really wiped out for about 5 days; sleeping 10-12 hours a day. Even now I am more fatigued than normal. I officiated at a wedding on Saturday, and said a Mass and did baptisms yesterday. I am also back in the normal weekly Mass rotation.

However, I did see my doctor today and he had the pathology report back. Both of the tumors he removed were cancer. It is papillary (not sure of the spelling), which is the most common form of thyroid cancer, and most treatable. My doctor said that in nearly 20 years of practice, having treated many cases of this type of cancer, he has never had a patient die from it. He also said that the tumors I had were very small, so we caught it very early. He says that my prognosis is excellent. However, I need to go in for more surgery (to remove the rest of the thyroid), and then they allow 6 weeks of "thyroid starvation" which a doctor friend of mine says is not very pleasant. When my body is very "starved" for the thyroid hormone (which I will not be able to produce since I will have no thyroid), I will go for radioactive iodine treatment and be "radioactive man" for about 7-10 days. The daughter of my DRE has gone through this and makes it sound "fun." But all in all, I will most likely survive all this. Now I just need to figure out the when with my pastor, since Advent/Christmas is a very busy time.

Thank you all for your continued prayers, and please understand why I am "signing off" for a while. God Bless.