Wow, where do I start? I have had a pretty interesting couple of months. I traveled 6500 MILES in July, going to camp, CHIC in Tennessee, and then to Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota for vacation. I am going to talk about those later though, because something much more inportant has happened since we got back. The good news is that we are pregnant again, but the bad news is that once we got back home, we found out that Erin has Thyroid Cancer.
This started a few months ago. Our nurse practitioner ordered some lab stuff done for Erin, and found that she had hyperthyroidism, which meant it was overworking itself. That led to an ultrasound that found a couple lumps, which led to a biopsy in February. That biopsy came back negative, and we were happy. Their procedure however is to do two biopsies to make sure they didn't miss anything. The second was at the end of June, and obviously the results were positive for Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. Cancer. That obviously took the wind out of our sails.
From what we have heard, Thyroid cancer is one of the best to have as far as cancers go. It rarely spreads or is very aggressive, and is usually very curable. The obvious problem is being pregnant: you can't go shooting radioactive stuff through her if there is a baby in there. So the doctors told us we need to surgically remove the whole thyroid as soon as possible. But there is a risk to the baby with surgery as well. So we have had the impossible task of trying to choose between the two. Have the surgery to eliminate the risk of it spreading, or wait until after delivery, eliminating the risk to the baby. Both are small risks, but risks all the same.
Our initial decision was to wait, because of the research we had read, it is very rare for this cancer to spread, and since she is so young, that makes cure even more probable. But after talking to a couple doctors, they had almost convinced us that the risk of it spreading was greater than the risk to the baby in surgery, which would have been okay, but the doctor didn't seem to see it as such a hard decision as we did, he didn't even seem concerned about the baby, and that put us off right away, so we asked for a referral to a doctor we had heard of in S'toon. We talked to him this morning, and he told us the exact opposite! He said the easy choice should be to wait until after delivery, because in all his experience the risk of it spreading is so small. And it can be monitored by ultrasound. So now we have another dilemma: do we trust the word of the head-and-neck specialist and wait, or do we get another opinion to break the tie? We go in for an exam a week from today with the doctor in Saskatoon, and hopefully then we will have an answer as to what to do.
I realize this post has already gotten long, but I haven't even gotten to the best part. It has blown my mind hearing all of the encouraging words from our friends and family. We have heard personally that there people praying in 4 provinces, at least 7 states, Mexico, and England. That alone is humbling, but the great part is that God has shown up. Erin and I have no explanation for the peace and strength we've felt through this last week besides the peace that passeth all understanding. God has never been more real to me than right now, and I am loving it. Yesterday we got to see the first ultrasound of our baby, andin that moment, God was there, and i was seeing that which God had formed with his very hands, kicking and bouncing around in Erin's womb. He has a plan, He knows what he is doing, and I trust Him totally, no matter what the outcome. Praise God and thanks to all of you who have been and continue to pray! It's not over by far, but God is with us.
Feel free to check back for updates, I will be better about it now that I have stuff to write about.
Luke
