Latest status on Pam 11/8/2008

[I started this yesterday and haven't finished it yet...in the meantime Pam posted her last blog, so some of this might be repetitive]

We haven't gotten around to updating this for a few days. On the 4th we went to the endocrinologist. He explained what we mostly already knew from the pathology report, that there was papillary cancer found, and that it had extended to the edge of the thyroid. He didn't seem nearly as concerned as the surgeon about the cancer having spread to the edge of the thyroid - he was quite optimistic. The primary nodule was about .7cm, which is relatively small, but there were others found. He said that with just one nodule only .7cm that some doctors may not even pursue the radiation, but where there were multiple nodules and it extended to the edge, radiation was going to be necessary, which we were already expecting.

The Low Iodine Diet

And so the fun begins. The thyroid is a unique organism in the body in that it is the only thing that processes iodine. This means that instead of needing chemotherapy or other more drastic cancer treatments, you can ingest radioactive iodine. They thyroid, or any remaining thyroid cells rather, will suck up the iodine and be killed. To make this treatment effective, your body needs to be depleted of iodine to insure that the thyroid cells are deficient and readily "suck up" any iodine introduced into the body. This means a low iodine diet for two weeks before they will do radiation treatment. At first this didn't sound so bad, until we realized just how limited this diet was going to be. No dairy. No egg yolks. No iodized salt (non-iodized is easy enough to find, but regular salt is used in just about everything). No seafood. No commercial bakery products, chocolate, red #3, soy, potato skins, and a bunch of other stuff. This was turning into a real pain, but as of today (the 9th) I'm more inclined to say that now that we've got it figured out it's not so bad. One of our neighbors has been making us a special bread that uses no eggs or milk. That has been a life saver for Pam. There is a "Good Earth" store off Riverdale Rd. that has tortilla chips, and that has also been really nice. Another neighbor has brought us over plenty of meat that is straight from the butcher with no added preservatives, seasonings, etc. Actually I was a little jealous of Pam's steak she made for herself the other day...Pam's also been eating lots of fruit and vegetables, fruit juices, and unsalted almonds and cashews.

So many people have provided so much for us. We have wonderful family, neighbors and friends. There is no way I could list all the things people have done for us the past few weeks, and have offered to do for us in the next few weeks. I have to go but I don't want to end up not posting this for another day so I'm posting what I have...more later.