{"id":82189,"date":"2020-02-25T04:52:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T11:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=82189"},"modified":"2020-02-25T06:18:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T13:18:51","slug":"biopsy-results-and-a-potential-plan-moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/25\/biopsy-results-and-a-potential-plan-moving-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Biopsy Results And A Potential Plan Moving Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry folks, no birds today. I have other things on my mind.<\/p>\n

I didn’t expect to get biopsy results on the large “nodule” and the right lobe of my thyroid gland that were removed four days ago until midweek but my surgeon called late yesterday morning with the very good news.<\/p>\n

Benign!<\/p>\n

That single word from my surgeon means that I should be completely done with this unpleasant episode in my life. No further surgery and no radioactive iodine to kill the rest of my thyroid and any cancer cells should be necessary. I’ll see my surgeon and\/or my family doctor one more time to check the incision site and decide if thyroxin therapy is necessary and that should be it.<\/p>\n

My relief is palpable, for reasons that go way beyond what many readers are aware of.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960. The N Reactor is in the foreground, with the twin KE and KW Reactors in the immediate background. The historic B Reactor, the world’s first plutonium production reactor, is visible in the distance. Image in public domain.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the late 40’s and early 50’s (I was born in 1947) we were living on our northwest Montana family farm so we were “downwinders” from the Hanford Project in eastern Washington State. The Hanford Site<\/a> <\/em><\/span><\/span>produced plutonium for America’s early nuclear arsenal (including the Manhattan Project) and the process of separating plutonium released radioactive isotopes into the air, particularly iodine-131, which were carried east by the prevailing winds to northwest Montana.<\/p>\n

I-131 settled on the grass, was ingested by cows and incorporated into their milk. Families in that part of Montana were told to avoid drinking local milk (we had a milk cow) and children were sternly instructed to never, ever eat snow, a favorite pastime of young kids our age.<\/p>\n

As a young woman my younger sister Mona developed thyroid cancer and two other primary and unrelated cancers later in life. After 20+ years Mona’s thyroid cancer spread to a lobe of her right lung which had to be removed. That surgery and related surgeries resulted in the loss of vocal cords, nerve damage and physical disfigurement. Mona eventually also developed unrelated ovarian cancer and lung cancer and the latter took her life.<\/p>\n

So yes, I’ve been worried. I think I literally melted into my chair when I heard that beautiful word from Dr. Preciado – “Benign”.<\/p>\n

I will say that I’m still struggling a little from surgery recovery and often feel like I’ve been run over by that proverbial freight train. I’m surprised that this recovery is more challenging than recovery from back surgery just over a year ago.<\/p>\n

I guess it’s just going to take time so don’t be surprised or alarmed if I take a day or two off from Feathered Photography in the near future.<\/p>\n

Hopefully this is the last you’ll have to read, and the last I’ll have to write, about my health challenges. I’m sick of even thinking about it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry folks, no birds today. I have other things on my mind.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334],"tags":[4980,4979,4978,4981,4446,4972],"class_list":["post-82189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-downwinder","tag-hanford-project","tag-iodine-131","tag-montana-downinder","tag-surgery","tag-thyroid-cancer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Hanford-Nuclear-Reactor-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-lnD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}