It’s November 2019 — just three months before my wedding. Between last‑minute planning, holiday travel, and everyday life, I’m exhausted and assume the swollen lymph nodes under my chin are just my body fighting something minor. But when they don’t shrink after a week, my concern grows. I visit my primary care doctor, who lightly presses around my neck and confidently tells me everything feels normal. I hesitate, not entirely reassured, and she must see it on my face because she quickly adds, “I can order an ultrasound if you want — just for peace of mind.”
Feeling embarrassed for seeming dramatic, I almost say, “No, I’m fine,” but something inside me won’t let it go. Instead, I say yes. Order the ultrasound.
A few days later, the phone rings. “Your lymph nodes look normal,” my doctor explains. “But there are two small nodules on your thyroid. Don’t worry — thyroid nodules are common, and most are benign.” I ask if there’s any way to be certain. She tells me they’re too small to biopsy, so we’ll just monitor them yearly. “Really, I wouldn’t worry.”
So — in a very un‑me kind of way — I manage not to. I get married, keep working, travel, and spend a dream honeymoon exploring Europe. When we return in January 2020, my “yearly” follow‑up ultrasound is already overdue. Another unfamiliar doctor calls: one nodule has nearly doubled in size, and its features look concerning. A biopsy is ordered. Two days after the biopsy — and just four days before our first anniversary — I hear the words: “As I suspected, it’s cancer.”
My heart crashes into my stomach. Sitting at a stoplight, I scramble to get my husband on the phone so he can hear everything firsthand. Then comes the sentence that will echo endlessly and make me feel both guilty and unseen: “But you’re lucky — it’s the good cancer.” I don’t feel lucky at all. What follows is a whirlwind of appointments, opinions, tears, fear, strength — and then, suddenly, COVID.
Lockdown arrives, and overnight the scariest thing I’ve ever faced becomes invisible to everyone else. Friends move, lives change, and my support system thins. Meanwhile, pregnancies bloom around me like confetti. Friends show ultrasound photos and glowing updates while asking casually about my own doctor visits. I don’t even want a baby yet — but the contrast feels cruel. They are choosing their life‑changing path. Mine chose me.
With the world shut down, I’m left to decide everything alone: Is it safe to operate? Can I risk hospitals? Should my parents fly in? Every answer feels like “no.” Papillary thyroid cancer is slow‑growing and mine is considered low‑risk, so I turn my apartment into a personal healing retreat. Ayurveda, strict diets, daily chanting, yoga, therapy, journaling — I pour myself into anything that helps me reclaim even a shred of control. Strangely, I’m grateful for the time. Had I rushed into surgery, I know my fear would have swallowed me whole.
On June 11, 2020, I say goodbye to my thyroid.
After a total thyroidectomy and central neck dissection, I wake to a brand‑new reality marked by a permanent scar — the line where life splits into “before” and “after.” My surgeon reassures me that my vocal cords were monitored and “everything is fine.” As an actor, this feels like salvation. I’m hoarse from intubation, but they insist it will fade.
The next day, I open my mouth — and nothing comes out.
Another day passes. Still silence. An endoscopy reveals the truth: my vocal cord isn’t moving. “It’s paralyzed,” they tell me. Maybe it’s a bruised nerve. Maybe not. Will it come back? No one can say. Six weeks without a voice feels like years. Oddly, the fear of cancer drifts to the background as I fight to speak again. Eventually — slowly — my voice returns, though one cord remains permanently still.
People assume removing the thyroid means I’m automatically cancer‑free. I wish it were that simple. Since surgery, I’ve wrestled with unreliable tumor markers, confusing labs, strict diets, endless scans, and more questions than answers. The lesson life keeps handing me over and over is uncomfortable but clear: learn to live in uncertainty.
I continue speech therapy, secretly hoping my stubborn vocal cord will one day remember its job. I don’t know whether I’ll need more treatment or if cancer will reappear. Every pill I take reminds me: I no longer have a thyroid, and my body depends on medication to pretend otherwise. It also reminds me how fragile control truly is.
Now, I live in three‑month increments. Every scan cycle brings the same anxious questions: Will I get a break, or will they find something questionable again? It feels like I’m on a long leash — free, but never fully untethered. And I keep thinking: what if I had refused that first ultrasound? Would I have ever known?
Those answers will never come. But one truth has become impossible to ignore: you must be your own advocate. Know your body. Trust your instincts. Ask questions. Insist on clarity. Keep going until someone listens.
Your life may depend on it.
And P.S. — there is no such thing as “good cancer.”
