About three hours after my scan, a “new test result” notification popped up on my phone.

I expected to see CANCER FREE!!!!!!

I expected my doctor to call me celebrating the great news that I had no cancer in me!

In hindsight, I see I overlooked a lot of educational material that would have shown me that is not how the treatment worked.

The radioactive pill doesn’t instantly kill off every thyroid cell in my body.

Instead, it slowly makes it disappear, taking approximately 4 to 6 months to destroy.

So when I read that there was iodine concentration in my thyroid, I felt like this was really not a good result. Even though immediately after that statement, my doctor had stated how there showed to be no spread beyond my thyroid, which was great news.

Still, it lacked the definitiveness I was seeking. So it just sits there? The cancerous remains just sit there for months? I have this thing poisoning my body for half a year?

I sent my doctor a fast frenzy of questions. Do I have to get another round of treatment? So the area of uptake is currently being killed off? So there’s no thyroid tissue remaining after this? Am I actually cancer free? What is next?

I cried, a lot. Despite this actually being the best news I could have hoped for.

But I read it as, “SIKE! You’re stuck with me for a bit longer”. Love, your cancer.

My doctor assured me that I was done with treatment and that we would be checking my levels in a few weeks. Based on my bloodwork, however, she said that my tumor markers were low enough that “we can consider you cancer free at this time.”

Huh?

You can consider me cancer free, or I am cancer free?

I get that I am basically 99% cancer free.. but percentages don’t mean much to me at this point.

I was told only 2% of thyroid nodules are cancerous. I was told my odds went up to 15% with my tumors features. I was told by my surgeon that he was 99% sure it was benign based on the hundreds of nodules he had seen in his practice.

I don’t trust the numbers being shot my way.

The odds definitely look good to an outsider. To the people in my circle who dismissed my concerns from the beginning.

But I knew what could happen despite good looking odds.

So I mourned that night, that weekend, and that week.

I felt my affect fall flat. I felt like I could burst into tears at any moment, so I resorted to putting up my harsh barrier. I was snippy to my family.

I wanted a cake, a balloon, champagne. But it did not feel right!

It’s not over. It’s not over. It’s not over. This is what this result meant to me.

I don’t pop champagne until this thing is clearly gone.

I learned that cancer does not go away overnight. We scan, we treat, we cut, we fight. Then we scan some more, we monitor, we do labs, we wait.

This will be the never-ending cycle of my life from now on.

There always will be a chance of regrowth, of new appearances in various parts of the body.

You just move from being treated to “in remission”. How crazy is that!

This was something that was entirely new to me. I had never heard it put that way. I just assumed people had their cancer free parties when they were done with treatment. But really, you wait five years before being able to ring that bell.

For those of us like myself who have a very good prognosis, we can kinda jump some steps and declare it whenever we want.

It’s just never definitive. Regardless of when you ring that bell, you carry it with you forever.

My aunt has a history with renal cancer and put it to me like this; “It’s like you pack it up into a suitcase and leave it in the trunk of your car. You don’t really think about it. And then the next scan rolls around and you pull it out again.”

For now, the best you can do is to just leave it in that trunk and try not to burden yourself with its presence. It’ll be heavy each time you pull it out, but eventually the frequency will lessen.