Raechel Zhao: The Bright Orchid Swallow (趙蕙燕)

First Pathology Report: “SUSPICIOUS FOR PAPILLARY CARCINOMA”

 

As soon as I read those words, I was thinking a million things a minute. Even though it was not confirmed and was only “suspicious” – my mind was going crazy.

First things running through my mind was:

1. ISN’T CANCER FOR OLD PEOPLE?

• I had this running theory prior to my diagnosis that the reason why cancer is hard to cure because our bodies are getting too old and our body was tired of being perfect all the time after 6+ decades of functioning properly. I have thought this way ever since I learned about telomeres in biology class, and nothing I have learned since then hasn’t shown me to be incorrect? I know as a scientist, this is a horrible way to justify things, but haha who cares…its my opinion not science class.
• So, what are telomeres? Telomeres are the end parts of your chromosomes that contain non-essential DNA. Every time your body replicates its DNA, these telomeres get shorter acting like supports for the rest of the DNA to get copied correctly. This is generally ok because the telomeres don’t contain any important DNA needed to function. BUT what happens when you run out of telomeres?! Obviously, grand design has put enough telomeres to last 30-40 years, but what about 70+ years now that science and technology has extended our life spans? If you run out of telomeres, won’t we eventually run into ESSENTIAL DNA that gets cut short each time DNA is replicated?! When DNA gets replicated incorrectly we get mutations, which are responsible for genetic diseases, and cancer. Based on my made up theory, not tested by science, it made sense with my high school knowledge base. Even now, I think there are still valid points to this argument. Up until my diagnosis, Cancer didn’t really scare me because I thought of it as a natural course of human life – part of the body breakdown that we see with age – just like wrinkles, physical frailty, and mental deterioration.

  

• BUT I’M 30 YEARS OLD! This theory doesn’t explain ME. Unfortunately, nothing explains my diagnosis except for the popular theory that we are continually consuming unknown toxins in our processed foods, or exposed to unknown toxic chemicals found in things like non-organic produce, plastic, or invisible frequency waves and pollution. All this sounded like hocus-pocus conspiracy theories, prior to my diagnosis because I was a person of science, and there is NOT a lot of data to DEFINITIVELY show that these things harm us. All these things are currently being debated in science and are very controversial depending on who you ask. In fact, you can find a plethora of legitimate studies supporting each side of the argument. Up until now, if it was controversial, I erred on the side of science and didn’t bother with watching these “toxins”. Now, I’ve been converted to the side of caution. I’m still a woman of science, but why tempt fate?

  

2. IS THIS GENETIC??? NO! My family doesn’t have a history of cancer. Well my auntie died in her late 40s, but she is the only one. Up until about 3 years ago, no one in my family on either side had died of cancer. Also, my one auntie passed away due to lung cancer, not thyroid cancer. However, now that I look back, it was similar to me in that there is no known cause for the cancer. She was not a smoker, and lived a fairly healthy life. But still, based on my medical knowledge, this doesn’t bear a lot of weight in terms of genetics being the reason for developing cancer.

3. Am I leading an unhealthy lifestyle? If I’m being honest with myself, I could being eating healthier, but I don’t think I lead an extremely unhealthy lifestyle. I go through my phases of extreme healthy living with daily exercise every 3-6 months until I get tired and then default to sporadic healthy living the other 6 months of the year. I have had a hard time the past few years with weight gain and maintaining my weight, but this is why I had my spurts. This is definitely a constant internal battle, but was it SO unhealthy to cause cancer? I don’t think I can answer that, but I sure hope not.

4. Have I been exposed to radiation or other crazy mutagen? Not that I am aware of. If so, why couldn’t it have had a cool side effect like spiderman?

5. Are my fertility medications the cause of my  development of thyroid cancer? My mom seems to think so, but I’m not convinced. So many people undergo the same fertility treatments as I do without this result. However, I will do more research on this and address this specifically on a different blog post.

6. How bad is papillary carcinoma? I quickly went to the NCCN website and downloaded the clinical practice guidelines for Thyroid Carcinoma because this is what the physicians use to guide treatment for papillary carcinoma. Other guidelines for other cancers are also available on this website and they are FREE. Per my reading, 97% of papillary carcinoma is curable. PHEW – dodged a bullet. Surgery is the primary course of treatment, and chemotherapy is usually not required. PHEW – thank goodness. Sooo silver lining is – I got the best kind of cancer you can get?

Basically non matter what I thought of to evaluate, nothing REALLY explains WHY ME?Story of every cancer patient right?

I am just a bit more fortunate in that IF I have cancer, my treatment regimen will be short and have minimal side effects – I hope. Luckily, I have a great support group of friends and family and my course of treatment will be easier than most. But for now…lets hope this is just a scare.