Update on the boyfriend...

Since so many people have asked, I decided that writing a blog post would be easier than trying to cover it over Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.

The boyfriend's surgery to have this thyroid removed due to thyroid cancer happened Wednesday. Because of the size of the thyroid and the cancer (3 cm node, surgeon 1,5 is typically large, so) the surgery ended up taking more than twice as long as it was supposed to. Which was entirely too nerve wracking for the group of people he had sitting in the waiting room. Everything did come out fine and he had to spend another two and a half hours in recovery before anyone could see him. Then he had to spend a couple nights in the hospital so they could monitor some things.

He's not totally cancer free yet but the biggest part of it is gone. He'll have to go through some radiation treatment soon and then hopefully that will clear everything up.

He's doing okay. He got home yesterday after a few days stay in the hospital. He was kept longer than originally planned because of his history with strokes and being on blood thinners plus the drain in his neck was acting obnoxious. He's happy to be home and not in a hospital anymore but still in some pain. Thankfully he got a prescription for Vicodin to manage the pain. Follow up appointments to see how he's doing and start the process of moving forward with other stuff happens in about a week, as that's about how long it's going to take him to heal up. The scar on his neck is pretty badass looking, honestly. As badass as any scar looks, anyway.

It's crazy that they found the cancer by accident. He's had a couple strokes, the first when he was 19. They've never been able to figure out why. He's seen countless doctors and specialists and gone through literally hundreds of tests for so many different things and never to find anything really wrong with him. Which I really cannot express to you how absolutely frustrating that is. His GP was dissatisfied with the "we'll likely never figure it out" line and decided to order some tests on some arteries in his neck. A sonogram showed an abnormal growth and some other weirdness. That led to the biopsy he had a few weeks back which led to us finding out he has thyroid cancer. His doctors have discussed a lot of things and ironically, a problem like that with his thyroid can cause issues with his blood which could be the cause of the strokes he has had due to his blood issues. It's a stretch and would be highly unlikely but given the fact this started back when a healthy 19 year old boy had his first stroke, ruling out "highly unlikely" isn't going to happen because not much about his health problems is normal or average.

Even if it comes out that this isn't the cause of his other issues, I'm insanely happy that they found it by mistake and that everyone was able to move so quickly in getting the surgery done thanks to his doctors all working together and being proactive the last couple months.

Thanks so much for all the text messages, tweets, direct messages on twitter, emails and Facebook connections from everyone reaching out to show concern and offer support. It's wonderful and we both appreciate it so much. :)