🚀 go-pugleaf

gopostal wrote:

> On Tuesday, May 13, 2014 3:16:12 PM UTC-7, petey wrote:
>>Hope things are much better on your end.
> 
> In truth it really worked me over. This was me before:
> http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a517/agutgopostal/be8c28c8-77f9-43a6-
b2c7-e3ef08941e80_zpsc97e3ee1.jpg
> and this is me currently:
> 
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a517/agutgopostal/IMG_20140506_155652_zps3f5b6ed4.jpg
> Hell of a change in a just a year, huh?
> 
> It was throat cancer spread into the lymphatic system, stage 4, treatment
> was brutal. I know what you mean about feeling rough. I dropped over 100
> pounds, lost all my teeth to radiation damage as well as most of my taste.
> 
> The part that pisses me off is that I was never a smoker. Apparently you
> can get this from certain sexual indiscretions (google Michael Douglas,
> same story). I've been married for almost 20 years and now my teenage
> choices decide to come back to haunt lol. I should have been smarter way
> back then.

Wow, that is quite rough. :-(

In my case it wasn't so bad.  Thankfully, the thyroid cancer I had (even 
though it had managed to metastasize into my lungs and ribcage already) 
seems to have responded to the radioactive Iodine-131 therapy and thyroid 
lobe removal surgery (neck had to be cut open again one month later after 
right lobe was removed & biopsied and found to be positive) I had to endure 
(I was apparently iodine avid).  The only negatives about having thyroid 
cancers is that they are unusually tenacious (you think you are cured from 
them (clear gamma camera body scans, no thyroid gland anymore) and in one to 
20 years later some thyroid gland cells that managed to escape into the body 
somewhere can spontaneously start to regenerate themselves again.

Plus, another negative to having advanced thyroid cancer is they like to 
keep your TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone (that your pituitary gland puts 
out)) suppressed with levothyroxine (synthetic T-4 thyroid hormone).  Only 
problem with that is that some people (apparently I am one of them) don't 
respond well to being highly suppressed like that. 

Not a smoker either (used to dip Copenhagen snuff), but they say that 
probably doesn't have anything to do with developing it.  Not to belittle 
the ordeal you had to endure, I could only wish that my cancer issues were 
due to sexual indiscretions (all the suck of having cancer, with none of the 
fun ;-) ).