Timing in the Thyroidland game

Some people say that timing is everything. Life is about "being in the right place at the right time" or the "wrong place at the wrong time". I have learned over the past year how precious time is. How easily it can be taken for granted and how we never know when the time is up, when we've run out of time with someone that we love.

The past 10 months have had a lot to do with timing for me.  It's been a running tab of time.  How long was it since I last hugged my Dad?  How many days were left of school?  How many days until I graduated?  How many days will I have to wait for those results or that appointment? There were times when the days dragged on and times where the days went by too fast.  Times where I felt that that the passing of time was healing.  Times where I have reflected to how different things are this year than they were on that same day last year.  Things are very different this year, but in ways they are also the same. This time last year I was stuck in the waiting place.  I was waiting to find out how bad Dad's cancer was.  It was a difficult couple of weeks that I floated through, hoping for the best but knowing in my heart that the news wasn't going to be what I wanted to hear.

This year I find myself again in the waiting place.  I'm waiting to find out if my cancer has returned and moved into my lymph nodes in my neck. At each step of the diagnostics, I tell myself "this will be good news, and this will be the last step".  But then I move to the next step again.  It almost feels like playing a game of Candyland with my daughter.  Sort of like a Thyroidland board game. Just when I think that I have finally won the game, I get one of those silly face cards and I have to move backwards again. Or I wind up on the wrong square and I have to wait until someone draws a certain card before I can move again. Unlike in Candyland I could wind up at the castle or somewhere worse if I wind up having to take the fork in the road.

Time moves slowly in Thyroidland. There are diets to be followed, shots to suffer through, scans to hold still for and most importantly...news to wait to hear. Although I've been through steps 1 and 2 of the game, I still have many more to take before the castle at the end is in sight. Because you see, it's all about timing.  You can't have the scan without starving any possible thyroid cancer cells of iodine.  And then there's the shots which have to be given 2 days in a row.  And then there's bloodwork that needs to be drawn on certain days.  The radioactive pill to swallow.  And of course, the big enchilada...the scan. All timed out just so. Each a carefully planned square on the Thyroidland game board.  If you are lucky, you get to the end where a tasty iodine rich meal awaits you along with a phone call from your endocrinologist or oncologist telling you that it's all clear and you can get out of the waiting place and advance to the castle. 

The timing of this year's round of the Thyroidland game troubles me.  As I mentioned earlier, there is that saying that "timing is everything" which makes me think that the timing can be an omen.  A good omen quite often, but sometimes a bad omen.  You see this isn't the first October that I have spent playing this game. I very vividly recall my very first round in October 2005, the year that my cancer was diagnosed.  That year my steps in the game started in September and ended in January of 2006 with a round of radioactive iodine therapy or RAI.  This year feels so similar to that one.  At every turn, I told myself "this time it's going to be okay & this is the last step".  Yet I would get that call telling me to draw another card, advance one square...move on to the next step. Rather than a glowing sparkly castle at the end of that game what awaited me at the end was a different sort of glow....the kind that you can only get after swallowing a capsule containing a hefty dose of RAI. There the castle was an isolated room at the hospital where everything is covered in protective plastic to protect it from the patient. Nurses rush in and out because you, the patient are dangerous to them.  The big excitement is when the radiation techs come in and measure you with their equipment to see if you are still dangerous to the public. You sleep, not because you are waiting for the prince to come and give you a sweet wake up kiss.  But because you are so hypothyroid that you can't stay awake. It's a place where you miss your kids, your husband, and your dog. Oh how much better that gumdrop covered palace looked!

I really hope that this year I wind up with the castle rather than the hospital room.  I wish that I could say that there was a winning strategy to the Thyroidland game, but I don't know which cards I will draw.  I try not to believe that timing is everything and I stay hopeful. But really I don't know this turn will play out. I don't if the deck was shuffled or if it will be just like 2005.  I can only hope that I get to keep going in the game until I get to the happy ending.