Several years ago, my middle daughter started having these episodes where she would get dizzy and lightheaded. Her pediatrician ordered lab work, an EKG, and a thyroid ultra-sound, since I have a history of autoimmune thyroid disease that tends to be hereditary. Everything came back normal, except for a benign nodule on her thyroid.
Fast forward a few years and a couple of monitoring ultrasounds later, and although the original nodule has remained relatively unchanged, a suspicious NEW nodule was discovered in summer 2023. We were referred to a general surgeon, who recommended a biopsy. We also have another ultra-sound done in January 2024, which confirmed growth of the suspicious new nodule. So, we went ahead with the biopsy in February 2024.
We found out a few days later that her biopsy came back positive. My 15 year old was diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma. Her surgery to remove her thyroid was April 11, 2024. The pathologist actually found a second site of cancer in her thyroid, however the lymph node samples were clear, indicating that the cancer most likely had not spread beyond her thyroid. Her parathyroids did not work properly afterwards, and although the doses have been decreasing over time, she is still on large amounts of calcium supplements three times a day. However, her scar is healing nicely! One of her biggest concerns was that her voice would be affected, and she was scared to speak for quite awhile after waking from surgery. When she finally spoke, her voice was strong and normal, praise God!
The next step for her is a full body scan with radioactive iodine to detect if the thyroid cancer has spread. The scan will be painless, however she will have to be off of her thyroid meds for three weeks prior to the scan. We are timing this to be after 4-H State Round-up and her Shakespeare Under the Stars theater camp. It will be a rough few weeks leading up to the scan and probably a couple of weeks more until her hormone levels come back up.
All things considered, she has done well with everything. It is a stressful and scary thing to be diagnosed with cancer at any age. She has lost weight due to the stress of it all. The frequent blood draws to monitor her calcium levels are no fun, either. We are so very grateful that we homeschool during this season. I tried to focus on keeping her workload as light as possible while completing her classwork for tenth grade. She even finished her dual credit government class that she was taking through the local community college with an A. Homeschooling has allowed us to be flexible with her workload and scheduling doctors’ appointments. With everything going on, I was able to smile each time the doctor’s office asked if I needed a note for school and I was able to say no.
Our prayers are for her parathyroids to become completely active again and for her full body scan in July to be clear. Even though we are optimistic that this will be the case, I have planned a very basic junior year of high school for her just in case further treatment will be needed. I will detail the curriculum plans for her and her sisters in another post.
North Star Homeschool Resources 