Don’t give up on your health. Be your own advocate. Ask questions. Listen closely. Ask more questions. Don’t leave anything out. Your medical care is a conversation between you and your doctor(s), and you should be satisfied with the information you get. If not, seek out other opinions and perspectives.

What prompts this? I have a story for you. In April I had an MRI for my back, but it was high enough up that they noted a couple nodules on my thyroid. About a week went by without hearing from my doctor, so I messaged her asking about it. We scheduled an ultrasound and that prompted a biopsy (fine needle aspiration) that revealed cancer. I’m not sure if we’d have taken another look at it if I didn’t ask my doctor about it.

Thankfully, my cancer is papillary thyroid cancer and it’s very treatable. I just had surgery to remove the thyroid and some lymph nodes and there was more cancer than we wanted to see, so we may need more testing and treatment, but that’s in the future and right now I just need to focus on recovering from surgery.

In the meantime, I’ve begun working on a post-surgery project. It’s my first garment and I’m excited to learn the new skills in the pattern. Here’s the pattern. https://ravel.me/clover-tee-solo

I’m considering a thyroid tattoo, of course. It might look something like this.

Updates will be forthcoming.