The Famous Neck

Over five hours, two doctors, one study, two ultra sounds, three vials of blood and lots of waiting equals no bowling today and no surgery scheduled.

What a long afternoon it was!  We arrived at our appointment at 11:45 and left the office about 5:15.   She was seen by several nurses taking vitals and medical history; vitals only once, medical history three times, and the road leading to the diagnosis more times than we can count. 

We were all very impressed with the endocrinologist.  He was obviously very knowledgeable, but also very personable.  He spent quite a bit of time with us taking medical history, going over treatment, performing a neck exam and an ultra sound.  The ultra sound found quite a few cancer cells.  There is a 1.5 to 2 inch tumor in her thyroid.  There are also several tumors in the lymph glands on each side and underneath the thyroid.  He spent approximately 30 minute performing the ultra sound taking pictures of the thyroid and affected lymph glands.

Morgan was asked to participate in a study.  This study is on the affects that genes play on thyroid cancer.  This is similar to the study that was done on breast cancer and its links to genes/heredity.   This paperwork took about 30 minutes to fill out, helping to pass some time while we waited to see the surgeon.

The surgeon was on site and able to see us today - after a two hour wait,  we're glad we waited though rather than make another appointment.    All he does is thyroid surgery, performing between two and three hundred surgeries a year. He has performed almost 3000 surgeries throughout his career.   He has been at OSU for two years and before that he was at Vanderbuilt Medical Center.  After he went over the normal medical history talk, he wanted to perform his own ultra sound.  We then talked (he talked) about what surgery was needed and the risks of surgery.

Morgan's cancer is pretty extensive in her entire neck area.  They say that the surgery itself will take six to eight hours.  The thyroid and lymph glands have many nerves running around and through them, so it is very tedious to remove the affected areas without damaging the nerves.  She will have at least a two night stay at the hospital, and could be out of school for up to two weeks.  Six to eight weeks after surgery she will have the radioactive iodine treatment that will kill cancer cells throughout her body.  Since her cancer is so extensive, we were told us that there is a possiblity that a second surgery may be needed and/or a second treatment of the radioactive iodine.

For non-emergency surgery, our surgeon and the operating rooms are booked until mid April.  Morgan is  a high priority case and they will be working on scheduling on Monday.  They would like to have the surgery performed within the next two weeks.  We told them that we could be ready in a days notice.  Surgery will be at OSU Medical Center.

Thank you all for your continued thoughts, prayers, emails, posts, phone call and cards.  We feel so blessed that we have so many people holding Morgan up in prayer.