Who remembers when the movie Fight Club came out? It was 1999, the year the artist formerly known as Prince had been singing about for 17 years, the year people were vaguely freaking out about a possible mass computer crash, and the year I graduated high school. I met my future husband in the Fall of ’99, slung bagels for the Summer, and was completely blown away by Ed Norton’s performance. So much of the movie is memorable, but one of the narrative bits that sticks with me is Jack, reading articles from Reader’s Digest. The articles are third-person narrations of a man’s organs, getting cancer and killing the man. It’s just a couple of spoken lines, but 24 years later, and I still remember them.

Tons of articles and essays analyzing Fight Club have been written. They posit about Jack’s depression, his dissociative identity disorder, his spoiled, middle-class white male privilege and how the movie takes itself so seriously it laughs at itself. The arguments are all very interesting, but why Fight Club stuck with me is completely different. I was a teenager, about to embark upon the Next Chapter in my life – college – and theoretically more independence, more experiences and more figuring myself out. I had experiences growing up where I did things that shocked my mom, but which in themselves weren’t actually that shocking; her reactions though, stuck with me, gave me a streak of rebellious, against-the-grain energy that had me and others label myself as a bit of a wild child. Fight Club spoke to that wild streak, with its anarchy and violence, the mental health issues that Norton and Bonham-Carter seemed to be functioning with. A child of a parent with undiagnosed mental health diseases myself, I was drawn to the expression of the Id, the nihilism and hope throughout the characters’ actions. It felt as though they were choosing their path and their actions, rather than what I’ve come to experience as an adult, that sometimes things just happen TO you.

I’ve always very closely inhabited my body, known its limits and been confident of its capabilities. This isn’t to say I haven’t had scrapes, colds or surprises, felt depressingly confined by the flesh vehicle carrying me through life, but for the most part, my body and I have had a solid working relationship.

Welcome to my late 30s, when I developed Grave’s Disease, an auto-immune disorder that would be managed on-and-off medications for six years, before I finally decided to have a surgery that should permanently fix the issue. In my early 40s, the thyroid suppressing hormone wasn’t working as well, the symptoms were stronger & more varied, and took longer to get under control. Still, compared to the extreme presentations of thyroid disease, doctors kept telling me that they didn’t think surgery was necessary, that I could continue to watch & wait, and use the suppressant medication, “until the symptoms became untenable.” I had a wide range of tests, saw specialists to ensure I didn’t have more impactful side effects on my heart from the stress of my metabolism and fight-or-flight reflex constantly being triggered, and then a test showed that yep, I was on the path toward eventually, possibly having a cancerous growth on my thyroid. I had already been leaning toward the thyroidectomy, so that test result was the final straw. I scheduled the thyroidectomy.

The surgical removal of one’s entire thyroid is kind of a wild concept. This small organ, wrapped around your throat, buffeted on either side by your carotid artery and your jugular vein, is normally about one and a half inches wide, from one side to the other. It controls your metabolism, heart rate, sleep cycles, growth and development by releasing hormones that signal the body to speed up or lower each of those aspects. For it to be removed, an incision is made in the throat, and the thyroid is cut, then pulled through the incision. (I’m skipping a whole lot of details here, such as the layers that need to be cut through and exactly how the thyroid regulates all of these functions.) I was put under general anesthesia for the surgery, also a crazy thing to consider. I met the anesthesiologist, who was kind, polite and obviously experienced. He told me there would be a big pinch, which there was, and then the next thing I know, the surgeon is asking me his name and to count. The surgery was done.

Leading up to the thyroidectomy, I had to try and imagine what my life would be like post-op. Without a thyroid, I would be dependent for the rest of my life on synthetic thyroid hormone to regulate all of these bodily functions. I’d felt the affects of my metabolism and heart rate being overstimulated by the Grave’s Disease, (which causes hyperthyroidism, or over-production of thyroid stimulating hormone,) but what would happen if I ended up in a situation where I couldn’t access my synthroid for a few days? Surprisingly, there wouldn’t be much change for a few weeks, as the body does store some TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone,) on its own. So – nothing life threatening, so long as I didn’t go too long without the medication. I might end up low-energy, a bit sleepy, but with modern medicine, I could theoretically walk into any pharmacy or clinic and get a dose. My quality of life would be much improved, I’d have reliable energy levels and a more predictable metabolism, I wouldn’t feel palpitations for no apparent reason. (Huge shout-out to the Grave’s Disease Reddit, where people in all stages and all treatments of the disease shared knowledge, advice and their experiences. Unanimously, any who had had a TT [total thyroidectomy] declared it to be for the better, a positive experience. I was somewhat skeptical – surely there had to be some bumps in the road – but all anyone would say was that they had some throat soreness from being intubated, some couldn’t drive for a few days because of neck soreness, and sure, some had weight gain while their synthroid levels were being worked out, but by and large, the group supported the choice, if that was the one a poster was leaning toward. Without them, I may have delayed this decision a year or two.)

The most wild part of the whole experience was meeting with the surgeon a week later, for post-op. I like him very much; he has a calm, trustworthy and wise demeanor. He’d always been masked whenever we met, and this time, behind his mask, he went through a list of questions and concerns I had, as well as informed me of the pathology findings. I had cancer. I had three small tumors, (small meaning they took up slightly less than 1/3 of the surface area of my thyroid,) but they had clean margins, (a sign they are not likely to have spread,) and no surrounding tissues carried tumors. I was to follow up with an endocrinologist as soon as possible, to discuss whether further treatment options were necessary.

So here we get into the third-person narration of what is happening with my organ, and it being dissociated from my body. It isn’t something I have any control over, that my thyroid developed tumors. It’s something that is simply happening, and I am along for the ride. In fact, it has already happened. The action to be taken has already been done- depending upon their size & margins, thyroid tumors are classified as low risk or high risk. Luckily, I had low-risk tumors; if they had been found beforehand, the recommended treatment would have been a thyroidectomy. One perspective is that I would have had a thyroidectomy within the year. The timing makes it more actively my choice, rather than the recommended course of action a year from now, when I would absolutely feel panicked and bewildered at being told that I had cancerous tumors in my body. It’s a weird state, to be told that as a by-blow of an action to treat one issue, another, scarier issue was addressed. I guess it *should* feel like a “freebie,” or a two-for-one, like I maybe won a jackpot. But it doesn’t feel like that.

Finding out that my body’s instructions went haywire and developed along a course that could potentially lead to some serious problems and miserable inhabitation of my flesh vehicle, feels more like a wake up call. The post op hasn’t been terrible, overall. I’ve had hyperthyroid symptoms and my energy has see-sawed throughout the day, so I feel wired in the mornings and depleted in the evenings, but because the only course is through, it’s been humbling. The only similar shift in physical condition I have for comparison is being down with a cold; it’s happening to you, and you don’t have much control. You can try to make yourself more comfortable, but basically you just have to wait it out. So I’ve been quiet and trying to peacefully inhabit this body. There will be more doctor appointments, there may be more to be done to try and prevent cancer from popping up elsewhere, but “having cancer” is in my rear view mirror. It’s something to write on medical forms forevermore, which means it may raise a red flag for future caregivers, but for now, I’m going to continue trying to peacefully inhabit my body, treat her well in the hopes that she returns the favor, and appreciate every moment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gravesdisease/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/graves-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20356240