DEAR THYROID^TM

Dear Thyroid,

I miss you.

I hate taking pills every day and for the rest of my life. I don’t care what doctors say, small chalky diamonds of medicine can never truly replace you.

I don’t like going for scans every six months and feeling the ultrasound wand slide and press all around the vacant space where you used to live. It makes me wonder where you are, pine for you, ache for you like I do my pup that disappeared so many years ago.

I would have done anything to keep you if I could have. It wasn’t your fault that cancer grew into you. I will never know what or whose fault it was, but I’m convinced you did not rebel. You were a victim of this. Two tumors and you never complained. I wouldn’t have known at all if the physician’s assistant hadn’t felt the lump while looking for something else. I didn’t scream either when I found out, I went silent.

Without you my heart no longer races or skips beats out of the blue, that’s good. But my hair is thinner and I get tired more easily, not so good. And then there’s the crooked smile carved into my neck, barely detectable now. But I look for it, feel it often. A reminder of you, some hope of me.

It was three years yesterday that we parted. Seems like a month, a day, an hour sometimes. The rest of me that lived after, lives on. For your sacrifice I am deeply thankful. You left me compromised, but stronger.

My brain wants to fill the hole in my neck with promise, plans, ever after. I fear it may not be able to resist replicating something else there instead. Traces of damaged butterfly gland, or a quiet seasonal migration.

But for now I just think of you and me as we were, and what I can be each day without you. Not anxious, not sick, not wondering what’s going on inside me that no one can figure out.

We had to part, there was no doubt. But I will always be a hollow tree, a home for a bird that will never return to an abandoned nest.

Robin

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Bio: Robin Myrick is a writer based in Austin, Texas. She holds an MFA in Writing and Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently working on her PhD in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. She also teaches writing and rhetoric at St. Edwards University, and works as a trainer and consultant for nonprofits.

Tags: Dear Thyroid Letters, papillary thyroid cancer support, thyroid cancer, thyroid cancer anger, thyroid cancer blog, thyroid cancer fighting back, thyroid cancer letters, thyroid cancer patients taking control

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