18 days for the biopsy is really short. Even if you have thyroid cancer, and you probably don't, it is really slow-acting. I probably had it for at least 5 years before anybody noticed and the consultant and nurse were like, "it's not going to do anything in the near future, but psychologically, it's better to remove it as soon as possible" and "it's better to do it now when you're young and healthy," so the implication was, it could wait years if it had to.

I have no idea why the two scans are so different, It is unlikely you would just develop thyroid cancer in those five weeks and certainly, if you did, it would be too soon for it to be likely to spread to a lymph node. Like I said, I had it for at least five years - can see the lump on my neck now when I look at old photos and know what I am looking for, and it's probably a lot more because that is how long it was visible on a photo! And in that time, it spread to 8 lymph nodes.

You could ask about why the different results, but...I don't know about the UK as I am Irish, but here, 18 days would be very quick to get an appointment on the private system here. We don't have the same public system as you do and I went private, as a lot of us do. It was definitely more than 18 days from the ultrasound to the biopsy - I think about a month - and I was actually a bit scared at how fast it was as I was wondering if that meant they were particularly worried.

Try not to worry too much - I know you are going to worry, but thyroid cancer really is very rarely what you are imagining when you hear the word "cancer." The most common form has a near 100% survival rate among "younger people" and "younger" means under about 50. Nor do they use chemotherapy or radiotherapy in most cases. The treatment isn't really any worse than I would imagine it would be say getting your appendix out.

I'll tell you my experience. I had my ultrasound in October 2019, then my biopsy in November. A week later, I went to get the results of the biopsy and the consultant informed me that "we found malignancies. Ah, it's not the worst scenario in the world!"

I had my thyroid and all the lymph nodes on one side of my neck remove in early January 2020 (again, this was on the private system and really made me think how inequitable our system is as who knows HOW long I would be waiting on our public system, especially with covid hitting in a couple of months later). I was in hospital for a week, but really only felt ill for about three days or so. After that, I was so bored.

I had a month off work, largely because I am a teacher and really needed both to be able to turn my head quickly (my neck was a bit stiff) and to be able to make myself heard across busy yards and so on. Even after I went back to work, my voice was a bit weak for a while. It was fine in the classroom, but yard duty was fun, it was difficult to call across the yard, so kids were running around, saying "Miss says you're to come back" or "Miss says we've to go in to class now."

I now take thyroid medication to make up for my lack of thyroid, which is just taking two pills each morning and no big deal.

I had radioiodine treatment in May 2020. This was annoying, as you have to isolate for some time after it and restrict your contact with kids and stuff, because you are radioactive, but it doesn't hurt or make you sick or anything. It's just swallowing a capsule. The one side-effect I had from it was a nose bleed about 11 days after it. I thought that was just my sinus medication, which can cause nose bleeds, but it was heavier than that would normally cause, so just out of interest, I googled and read that it is fairly common for it to cause a nosebleed about 10 days later.