Tomorrow is "remove the cancer" day...

It was pointed out to me by a couple blog readers who creep on my twitter account that I never wrote an update to this post regarding the boyfriend and why I was asking for good thoughts and such for him.

We found out over the weekend the results from the tests he had done and found out he has thyroid cancer. He met with the surgeon who will be performing the surgery on Friday so they could go over stuff. He's going in this morning before work to have some pre-surgery testing done and the surgery to completely remove his thyroid is on Wednesday morning. He's on some medication for other health issues (strokes, which could be related to thyroid cancer if he's had it as long as they say is possible but they won't know that until a little while after the surgery when they can do some more blood work on tests on him) and they had him go off of them two weeks ago in case the tests did reveal he had thyroid cancer. If he hadn't been off of them, they wouldn't be able to do the surgery as quickly because it would be too risky.

As far as cancer goes, thyroid cancer is the best type to get, according to all the doctors he's been to recently. It's very treatable. He'll have to be in the hospital 1-2 days after the surgery, depending on how things go.

The hard part about all of this is actually the financial aspect of it. Being sick is fucking expensive. He does have health insurance thanks to his job but even with that it's still quite a few thousand dollars coming out of our pockets. I'd hate to see what all of this would cost if he didn't have insurance. It's kind of amusing that he's got cancer and has surgery and radiation coming up and he's more stressed over the financial aspects of it than anything else. He has to miss at least a week of work to recover from the surgery so that doesn't help either. His surgeon said he might need more than a week but I'm really hoping not. We were hoping to move into an apartment closer to his job next month and fix his non-working Ford that's been sitting non-working for a couple months now with tax return money. But that and then some will be going towards medical expenses now, so. I feel kind of like an ass complaining about that when the important thing is getting him healthy and cancer free. But at the same time, I don't want him stressing out over the financial aspect of this more than he already is because that's not going to help at all. Of course, I can't stop him from stressing about that because I know he's going to and it's a very valid concern to have. And if I focus on that then I don't have to worry about my mind wandering about complications and things that I've been told could possibly go wrong. I'd rather think about financial problems than the possibilities of things not going well at the hospital, ya know? Which is silly but I can't help but worry.

As far as the surgery goes, he's optimistic it'll go well and they'll be able to get it all so he can be cancer free again. My uncle, who is in his early 70's, just had this same procedure done last week and is home recovering and getting better daily. I've had a couple friends who have had relatives go through the same ordeal and they've all been able to come out on the better end of it. The assurance that we know several people who have had this and gotten treatment for it makes it a lot less scary. Though because of the other issues he has and the fact that stuff can go wrong at any given moment even if it's "almost" certain it will be fine, I'm still going to worry about him until they come out and tell me the surgery went well. It's not like I'm losing sleep or making myself sick with worry but I don't want to have myself in some little bubble of "everything will be fine" either. If something did go wrong, it would suck that much more if I hadn't allowed anyone negative thoughts in and just basically convinced myself everything would be dandy. A little worry is healthy. I think anyway, lol. Now I'm rambling, so enough of that.

And on the plus side, he finally has to quit smoking. Of course that means he'll be hell to be around for a while, like usual the other times he's "quit" for a short amount of time. Then eventually he'll move passed that nightmare to be around cranky stage. I'm much more happy about that part of it than he is. :D

So, if y'all could send good vibes, happy thoughts and all that good stuff our way tomorrow, it would be much appreciated. Shane's surgery is at 9:30 AM and I'll be chilling there waiting for them to slice him open and take the cancer out of him. I'm sure I'll be tweeting an annoying amount or something while I wait tomorrow in an attempt to distract myself so I'm less anxious while I wait, lol. Hopefully it all goes well.

Happy Tuesday!