I had thyroid cancer and while every situation is different, the only symptom I had was a lump on my throat that I was not even aware of. I don't think it is common to have many symptoms, so my guess would be that things like the burning in your throat, shoulder aches and headaches are likely to be coincidence. I don't think any of those are really connected to thyroid cancer, though again, different people can have different experiences.

Weight loss could be due to an overactive thyroid, but I don't think that would mean anything about whether the nodules were cancerous or not. I think benign ones could also cause your thyroid to become overactive.

Thyroid nodules are very common. Something like a quarter of people have them? The vast majority, I think over 90%, are benign. I don't think there is any great difference between the symptoms of those that are benign and those that are cancerous.

And even if it is thyroid cancer, and it probably isn't, thyroid cancer is not what you might be imagining when you hear the word "cancer." The most common forms have a near 100% survival rate among younger people, where younger means under about 50. And they rarely use chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Basically, if it is thyroid cancer, they will remove your thyroid and you will probably be fine. If they think you are at higher risk of reccurrance, they will do radioiodine treatment a bit later, which basically just means swallowing a capsule. The name makes it sound like it is something ongoing, but it's not. It can be annoying as you are radioactive afterwards so you have to stay in isolation for a while, but it is a one-off and doesn't make you feel sick or anything. My only side effect was a nosebleed about ten days after it.

I was back at work a month after the operation if that tells you anything!