Hi (this will probably be a long story sorry!) So I just turned 21 and otherwise from strange eating habits, I'm perfectly healthy. But see, a few months, I got bit by a cat (lol) and had to go to the a&e for a tetanus shot and whatever. During the visit, I was super conscious about my appearance, just scanning all over my body and whatnot when I suddenly noticed something abnormal. I had a lump on my neck. To the bottom right. I was confused and asked my dad who had picked me up from the hospital if he had something like that, he just pointed to his adams apple and we laughed, but I was a bit perturbed by it. I asked the rest of my family if they had something like that and none of them did but my parents told me to book a doctors appointment and I was just dismissively like "of course, when i have time" because it was during the first lockdown and I didn't think it was a big enough problem to get checked out. 

I just thought it would go away on its own. Haha. 

Then, a few months pass, my dad often hounding me to book that appointment and me ignoring it. But during that time, I would constantly complain of a sore throat, and for a week my right ear just killed me, then it was my left then my jaw. It got to the point when I was taking painkillers to go to sleep because it was just that bad. I don't know if that's connected, but what else could it be? Then, I saw a scary advertisement about neck lumps and made the earliest appointment I could in late October. 

The telephone consultation was just me first explaining everything and the doctor, bless him, was just probably like "oh this little girl is worrying about nothing" until he asked me how big it was, like if it was pea-sized? I laughed and said "nooo. it's quite a bit bigger than that. more like a golf ball." He turned quite serious then (i feel like) and asked to turn it into a video consultation and so I showed him my neck, told him my weight and stuff. The doctor then said he was sending me for a bloodtest, x-ray and an ultrasound (this was going to take a few weeks to come coming from the hospital.) I was a bit worried, but kind of rationalised my brain into thinking that it was just protocool with this stuff. 

So, I have my bloods and x-ray taken the next day at my surgery. Then I'm at work two days later when I get a text from the surgery telling me to book an appointment to discuss my results. I got scared then. Definitely. My mind was going a little hysterical and I dove into researching all the possibilites that this thing could be, and you know how that turns out because that side of the internet is never pretty. 

And then I have my appointment and the doctor says the x-ray was clear, nothing wrong with that but my bloods showed that I was low in vitamin d and folic acid and was going to prescribe meds for that. After the call, I was so freaking relieved. What the hell was I even worried about? See, I consider myself quite a pragmatic person but those days until this appointment, I was definitely not myself. The throat pain was getting worse, and in retrospect, the stress of those weeks augmented that. Who knows if I was even in pain? I don't know. Anyway that's another story haha. 

Now, I'm just waiting for my ultrasound letter to come in the post and it finally does for the first week of December. I go to it and the ultrasound technician tells me that it's "a right thyroid nodule. there's no other lumps in your neck. just there." I'm just humming while wiping away all the gel from my neck, listening to her tell me that her report usually takes around 7 days to be sent over to my gp so to make an appointment in about a week and a half or so so I can discuss the results. I thank her and go home. 

That was on a sunday and monday passes over like normal. Then it's tuesday morning, a little past nine o'clock when I get a call and it's a receptionist from my gp surgery. She says "oh, i'm sorry. I meant to call you yesterday but the doctor has booked you in for an appointment today in half an hour to discuss your test results." I'm confused. Test results? Oh. The ultrasound. And I'm just thinking of the words the technician told me, that it would take at least a week to come through and so I don't panic, suprisingly, but I don't feel well enough to eat my breakfast yet so I just sit with my cat and wait for the call. 

The same doctor calls and we talk a bit about my previous tests and then he gets into the ultrasound. He says there were "abnormalities" and I'm just waiting, bated breath for him to continue. Now, my mind went into a funny place here so I don't quite remember exactly what he said (jeez haha) but they couldn't quite determine a firm diagnosis on the nodule and that they didn't know if it was fully "cystic or had solid material in it." I think he said there was solid material in the nodule though. I don't know, only half of me was there during that phone call. I was so shocked. He used the term "moderately suspicious" as noted on my ultrasound report, which meant nothing much to me at the time. He said that he was going to put me through for an urgent two-week referral to get an appointment at a hospital for head and neck specialists or something and it was the first time I heard the word "cancer" come out of his mouth. I'm pretty sure I was only 25% there then haha. He said that he didn't want to wait with things like this and it was that moment when I started to really hate myself for waiting so unecessarily long to book an appointment in the first place. The doctor is nice and reassuring and I thank him before ending the call, after which I swear like a trucker and just sit. The words "this could be proper serious" pop up in my head and I just try to calm myself down before telling my dad. 

I get a phonecall the next day from the hospital telling me that a face-to-face appointment has been booked in for me next week. 

Now I'm waiting for that. If there's anything that I or anyone else could take from reading this, is that, your health does matter and not everything can just go away. I hope everything is okay. haha. thank you for reading!