I’m discovering that anniversaries bring up interesting emotions. I expected to be writing about my 5k race for this post, but didn’t realize just how many feels it would create, falling as it did almost exactly a year after starting chemotherapy. And because I’ve been busy, since race day I also had my six month monitoring appointment for my thyroid nodules, with mixed results. So yeah, all the feels.
Those finish-line feelings
Race day was wet and windy, but that didn’t matter. My goal was to test my fitness and it gave me good information—I have lots of room to increase my stamina and strength. By the next day, I felt as if I had raced a hard 10k instead of completing a 5k at one of my slowest times ever.
Still, it felt good to be able to toe the line at an in-person race and, despite the weather, be immersed in the atmosphere of the running community again. Even more, I was grateful to my friends and colleagues for their support in raising over $1800 for cancer research, with more than $500 coming in after the race.
What surprised me was how deeply I felt the accomplishment of finishing the race. I’ve got a collection of 5k medals, and often knock off that distance during the week for a ‘longer’ mid-week run. This time, though, I found myself processing the last year, and acknowledging that when I started treatment, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back to a start line to race. Big emotions, and an affirmation that racing, and not just running, is still a big piece of what I get out of this sport.
More waiting … again …
And I’m learning that this journey will serve you surprises along the way.
My anxiety is usually triggered by my quarterly bloodwork and CT scans—the ‘scanxiety’ you hear cancer patients talk about as we move through the surveillance rollercoaster of survivorship. My March tests came back with no indication of recurrence or metastasis—the kind of news you celebrate.
So I wasn’t ready for my 6-month monitoring appointment for my thyroid nodules to throw me for a loop. When the nodules showed up as an incidental finding on one of my CT scans, we moved through a second scan, an ultrasound, and a fine-needle biopsy to diagnose a TIRAD-5 evaluation of one nodule. And the biopsy results came back benign. Exhale.
Last Thursday when I met with my thyroid specialist, I approached it as a routine appointment. I had no new symptoms to speak of. But the ultrasound done during my appointment showed that though the nodules on the left lobe of my thyroid were smaller—good news—the one at the mid-pole on the right lobe had changed and grown in size. Not what you want to find in a TIRAD-5 nodule.
With a furrowed brow, my doctor looked at me and said, ‘so we’re going to need to biopsy that.’ Deep breaths.
The upside of managing this part of my health puzzle privately is we were able to do new bloodwork and the biopsy all in the same appointment. The results should take about a week to come back.
Realistically, it’s likely still benign, as it’s unusual for this type of nodule to transform. Still, if it keeps growing, that may mean surgery down the line to remove it before it creates issues with things like swallowing, breathing or voice changes.
So I’ll just be over here, probably running a little harder to create the endorphins that will damp down my concerns until the biopsy results come back. Fortunately, the sun has come out and the weather has warmed up, so those runs can be back on the mountain that is my happy place.
Running from hysteria 
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