He looked at me incredulously. “What are you thinking? Your body just went through a major trauma! You had cancer and you lost your thyroid a major organ. You need to give yourself time to heal”

T hyroid cancer isn’t a big deal. Doctors will tell you that if a person had to choose a type of cancer thyroid cancer is the one to choose. As someone who works in the medical field I was well aware of this.

Thyroid disease runs in my family so it was no surprise when at age 26 a year after the birth of my second child I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I had been feeling completely exhausted and had to push myself to get through the day. I was placed on levothyroxine a synthetic thyroid hormone and within a few months I felt better.

About two years later I started feeling pain in my throat. I figured that it was either a thyroid issue or reflux and I asked a physician’s assistant in the office where I work what she thought. “Probably reflux ” she said. She gave me medication for reflux but the pain continued to get worse. My whole neck began to ache and I had trouble swallowing. I consulted with a doctor who said it was probably an inflammation of the thyroid that would take a few weeks to go away but would heal on its own.

One day a couple of weeks before Pesach I was rubbing my throat because of the pain and I felt a lump. At this point my doctor sent me for an ultrasound.

“Do you think it’s anything?” I asked her.

“You never know ” she replied “but I doubt it.”

The ultrasound showed a small one-centimeter nodule on my thyroid. I went for a biopsy during which I heard the radiologist ask the technician “Are there calcifications?”

“Yes ” she replied.

My heart started to race. “Ein od milvado ” I whispered over and over. Calcifications I knew are a sign of cancer.

Waiting for the results of the biopsy was agonizing. Each day I called the doctor’s office only to be told that the results had not yet arrived. Finally after a full week of waiting I got a call from the doctor. The nodule was cancerous.

That phone call came on Thursday. Friday night was Seder night.

I felt as though I had been hit by a truck. But there was no time to digest the news because I had to finish preparing for Yom Tov and dealing with pressing questions such as how much matzah I was obligated to eat considering that I could barely swallow.

In the meantime I took the word “cancer” out of my mind. Thyroid cancer isn’t really cancer I told myself. It’s just a growth that has to be removed.

I resolved to focus on the positive and be grateful that it was nothing worse. After all how could I complain when people with other types of cancer had it so much worse? It’s really not a big deal I told myself.