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.
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