How does my neck look? 8/31/11

Well, still haven't managed to make it to the Sprint store to complain about the issues I am having with the camera on my cell phone, so although I have been taking photos of my scar, I have not posted any of them because of the red coloring that shows up in all of my neck photos, regardless of how I hold my phone when I am taking the photos. But, it is time, since I think the last time I posted a photo of my scar was a month ago.

The weird tugging on the right side of my neck hasn't been bothering me much for the last two weeks now. And, I am happy to report that so far this week, I haven't needed an afternoon nap (at work), so I think that is a good sign. However, I still have problems remembering to take my afternoon T3 dose on the weekends. I just need to take them with me no matter where I go - the gym, shopping, wherever, I need to take them with me so I always have them.

I was looking at some of the unfinished prescriptions I have from the past year. I have bottles for 175, 137, and 125 mcg of Levoxyl. I think the only one I could use is the 175, if I split it (87.5 mcg v the 88mcg I am on). Doesn't matter anyway, I guess because all of these unused pills either expired today or a couple of months ago. What a waste. I was thinking of seeing if anyone in my support group needed any of my unused pills, we could do some sort of medication exchange. Not self medication, just giving away what I can't use. I may not be able to do it with my expired Levoxyl pills, but maybe someone else in the group has unused pills that could offer to someone else. Levoxyl isn't as expensive as Synthroid, but it still adds up over the year.

Anyway, how does my neck look?

Acupuncturist says...

"No climbing for two weeks; if you go to yoga, absolutely no chattarangas." I went climbing twice this week, and after both sessions, my right arm was not happy, at all. Last Sunday, my right arm got very agitated during the class, especially while doing chattarangas. So the recommendation, of course, was to rest it - lay off the climbing, or modify the yoga pose (do a downward dog instead of a chattaranga). All that while she was needling my back and right arm.

When she came back to remove the first set of needles, I asked if I could at least belay if I couldn't climb. She said, "As long as your right arm doesn't hurt while you are belaying." Fine, I can deal with that for two weeks. In went the second set of needles, on the front side, and e-stim on my right arm.

When she came back to remove the second set of needles, she had a compromise for me: "If I kinesio tape you, you can either climb or do yoga, but not both." Wow - unexpected, but I wasn't going to turn that down. Tape me up! So I now have this lovely black tape on my right arm and part of my back. Kinesio tape is waterproof, so should last for about a week. She explained what it does, which I don't remember word for word, but I think the basic idea is it creates a space between your skin and the muscles below it, which somehow allows the healing process to take place faster. If it works, why not?

Full week

It was a non-stop week. I got the bad news (cut down my runs to 1mi/wk) at PT on Monday. Hit the gym Tuesday night to do extra PT exercises. Wednesday night run club. Thursday in LA for my mid-year review, then climbing and another trip to the gym to do my extra PT exercises. This evening was my first acupuncture appt with a licensed acupuncturist (I used to go to students at PCOM). And that's not the end of it. Tomorrow, me and Angelo will be getting hair cuts. Sunday....not sure what I'm going to do yet - get up early enough to watch some run club buddies run in the AFC 1/2 marathon? go to the gym? I really should just sleep in.

It was so good to go climbing last night after about a month off. In that time I was hoping my right arm pain would go away, but it didn't. I ended up not even finishing my last route last night because my arm hurt and I was just wiped out. At least my arm would have fresh pain for my acupuncture appt this evening.

I think my acupuncture appt went well. My arm and left knee feel pretty good now, well neither one was bothering me today. The part of her evaluation I was looking forward to was the posture grid. The first thing she noticed was that my left shoulder was higher than my right. Check. To compensate, my right shoulder pulls forward and my neck tilts to the right so I can walk straight. In addition, my right hip is lower and tilts forward. Next, she did some mobility tests on my right arm. Only one of the rotator cuff tests she did on me hurt, and I was weak in another test. All other tests went well. On to the treatment. She says to dress down to my undies, lay face down. Wow - I never had to do that at any of my appts at PCOM. She needled areas on the right side of my back and shoulder, and a few points on my calves. 20 mins. Then she cupped my back. Two cups, but I didn't see any marks on my back after the treatment, so that was nice. Then she did a few more points, on my flip side, on my feet, legs, and arms. 10 mins. I decided to make an appt for next Friday - she said I need to come back at least a week later, so she can see how I responded to the treatment. The pain could be contained for up to 1.5 days. As my treatments progress, the area of the pain could be reduced, but become more painful. So I need to monitor how things feel between my treatments, and let her know what changes.

During the spinal injury test she did on me, I felt that odd tingling in the right side of my neck. I didn't say anything, since it doesn't really have anything to do with my right arm pain. Or does it? I should monitor that tingling thing as well, let her know if it gets worse.

Acupuncture appt was informative. Shoulders and RT hip are out of alignment. First time I ever stripped down for needles & cupping.

I wonder if it is Ok to take my T3 pills with wine.

Situation

So I finally decided to call the sports medicine acupuncturist that had spoken to my running group a few weeks back. She actually needled my right arm that night because it had been hurting on and off for a couple of weeks at the time. She was out yesterday when I called her office to make sure she took my health insurance, so she called me back this afternoon. I like the idea of looking for the bio-mechanical root of the pain, not just treating the pain locally. Something about putting me in front of a grid to see which areas of my body are imbalanced. She said she'd take a look at my hip issues as well. My appt is on Friday. The first appt is 90mins so she can do an assessment, then a treatment. This should be interesting.

I stopped getting acupuncture treatments last summer, after my RAI treatment. At first, it was because I didn't want to accidentally expose anyone to radiation. Then I just started to freak out about any remaining thyroid cells being stimulated enough to grow, allowing my cancer wake up, and spread. It probably wouldn't, but I think I got that idea from the fact that they had recommended one of the instructors to work on me after I told them I might have thyroid cancer. I was thinking of taking that treatment route, but ultimately, I decided it would be better for me to know, for sure, that I had thyroid cancer, and the only way for me to do that was to have it removed surgically.

Now the running thing. This evening was run club. Monday night after my PT session, I was thinking of continuing with my current running program (3mi road, 1mi treadmill intervals x2) because I had already cut down from 5 days (3 road, 2 treadmill intervals) . But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be best to comply for a few weeks, and see if there is any improvement. So, I decided to do a mix of jog/walk over 2mi (walk .5mi, jog .5mi-1.5mi, walk 1.5-2mi). No pain during the run. No pain on the steps going to the start of the run. But boy did my left knee hurt last night when I was at the gym doing some of my PT exercises. So, although I won't be running as much over the next couple of weeks, I am hoping that I find some other workouts to keep me out of trouble, and improving my hip strength.

Physical Therapist says - part 3
I have to cut down on my runs. Optimal is a one mile run 1x/wk; elliptical and bike the other days. Crap.

Who needs Oil of Olay?

We don't. The 'we' in this instance being me and a couple of my friends from SF. Long gone are the days when I'd be hanging out on a weekend evening with Jen, Andrea, Victor, and the rest of the gang. We are all in our 40's now, and I don't think any of us looks a day older than we did we when all lived in SF over eight years ago. Sure there are kids, mortgages, and health issues in the picture now, but I think we are all aging well. We all look younger than we are, but I was amused to hear that I am not the only one that feels '40' sometimes when I get up in the mornings. And we are all worried about our parents, but for varying reasons. It was great catching up with everyone.

I have only kept a very small circle of family, friends, and co-workers updated on my ThyCa journey. Jen is one of those people, so I had a little bit of explaining to do with Andrea. It is still weird talking about it, whenever I open up about it, but at least now I am moving on with my life. So even if it is still weird, at least I am not waiting and worrying over my next treatment, and wondering if things will ever be normal again.


Other updates....
In addition to hanging out with friends, I finally got the calorie counter on my Garmin to work. None of my previous runs showed how many calories I expended during my runs. I had contacted Garmin Support (GS) last weekend to report the mapping issue (running through peoples yards and three instances during a run where my elevation increased by 200 ft!). During one of the email exchanges I had with GS this past week, I told them I was also having problems with the calorie count always being '0' for each run. I was told to master reset it twice, using two different methods. I was skeptical, but it worked - my calories were counted during my treadmill run this afternoon. The last run I did outdoors was at run club last Wednesday, so I still don't know if the mapping issue was also fixed with the resets.

Yesterday, my left knee was really bothering me, so I was afraid to do any running. In fact this past week was not a good week for my knees. Tuesday evening I went to a yoga class. I forgot the name of the pose he had us do, but it really killed my right knee. A LOT. I was surprised that I didn't have any pain, in either knee, during run club the following day. Going down (and sometimes up) the stairs at the gym was still painful this past week. And, I had random pain during exercise or just shifting my left leg around while sitting or even lying down. And, it doesn't help much that I skipped my evening PT exercises a couple of times this past week because it was late and I was too tired. Hopefully the sum of all of these things does not mean that I undid the past five weeks of PT sessions. That would totally suck!

So, I have 12 PT visits, not 6. Thank goodness because it sounds like I still have a lot of work to do, esp for my left knee pain.

T3 issues

Looking over my posts for this past week, it seems that I am having problems with this medication - I lost one, they taste funny, I forgot to take one... Thank goodness I only have one or two more doses left in this bottle.

I am surprised that I was not tired yesterday afternoon, when I had forgotten to take my afternoon dose. I did crash really badly last night though. From the ThyCa email listserv, the way to correct missing a dose of Levoxyl/T4 is to take two the next day. I don't ever remember reading anything about what to do if you miss a T3 dose. T3 is fast acting, and short-lived, so I don't know what the benefit would be for taking two of these at the next dose. Could it make my TSH increase high enough to allow any thyroid cells, good or bad, to produce Tg? I doubt it, but I really hope this is not possible.

Other than the missed T3 dose, the only other thing to report is that tugging sensation in my neck is still there. I think I should only be worried if I feel some odd lump on the right side of my neck, like a bigger than expected lymph node. All I can do is keep tabs on how I am feeling and if I feel anything out of the ordinary anywhere on my neck. The minute any of this info changes is when I need to contact my ENDO. Hopefully everything is copacetic for the rest of the year.

I forgot to take my afternoon T3 pill yesterday. Didn't realize this until 10pm, which was too late to take it.

Oh WOW!!! I just found out that my swim star niece won the 200-meter breaststroke final today at the US National swim meet in Palo Alto.

My T3 pills taste.....funny. kinda like sour milk, or sour something, but they just don't taste right. I noticed it earlier this week.

Lost one of my T3 pills this morning while I was fumbling around for my water bottle.

ThyCa group meeting - Aug 2, 2011

We had a pretty good turn out at this evening's ThyCa meeting. Probably helped that we had a guest speaker - an ENDO that manages the care for a couple of our members. His presentation was very informative, and he explained things well. Enough such that a few members are interested in switching to him as their ENDO.

A few things he mentioned:
-There are five forms of thyroid cancer - the one we had not heard about is 'lymphoma'. It is treated more like a lymphoma, along the lines of leukemia and lupus, not like thyca.
-Thyrogen shortage: this time because particulate matter has been found in the vials, so production has been stopped for the time being.
-Thyroglobulin (Tg) testing before surgery is useless since you still have a thyroid.
-Since ThyCa is so slow growing, recurrence could happen many years after initial treatment because it could take that long for detectable Tg to show up.
-WBS are not particularly sensitive, so they are not part of the new guidelines for follow up treatment; ultrasound of the neck is more sensitive as the neck is the first place for recurrence to appear.

That last point worries me since I am still feeling that weird tugging sensation on the right side of my neck.

Physical Therapist says - part 2
My left knee isn't tracking properly, hence the knee pain going up and down stairs. Great. More exercises.