We spent the first days of Pesach with my in-laws. Not wanting to ruin everyone’s Yom Tov, my husband Yitzchak and I decided to wait until after Pesach to tell the family about the diagnosis. My in-laws saw that I wasn’t feeling well, but they assumed it was due to hypothyroidism and thought that I just needed to have my thyroid medication adjusted.

Throughout Yom Tov, the diagnosis hovered in the background of my mind, because I was too busy to pay much attention to it. When Yom Tov was over, it was time to inform our relatives. By then, the initial shock had passed, and the growth on my thyroid was just a fact of life.

As the medical professional in the family, I was able to explain the situation in detail to both sets of parents and siblings and reassure them that I wasn’t in danger and that my condition was easily treatable. All I needed was surgery to remove the growth, followed by one session of radiation therapy with radioactive iodine to kill any diseased cells that remained.

Some members of my family urged me to have the surgery done by a top-tier specialist in Manhattan, but that would have meant a six-month delay, and I wanted to get this over with so that I could get on with my life. Why make a bigger deal out of it than it had to be? After receiving a brachah from a gadol, I scheduled the surgery locally, for mid-July, which was shortly after my brother’s wedding.

The surgeon explained to me that removing the growth on my thyroid would invariably cause nerve damage to the vocal chords, which could affect my ability to speak and breathe. “If both vocal chords are damaged, you will need a tracheotomy in order to breathe,” he cautioned me. He assured me, however, that the nerve damage would likely be reversible and not severe.

I wasn’t too worried about the procedure. It would mean a hospital stay of a few days, some post-op pain and restrictions, and then a recovery period of a few weeks. Big deal.

My parents watched the kids for those few days, while Yitzchak stayed with me in the hospital. The surgery went well, baruch Hashem, and afterwards I was able to swallow normally for the first time in months. I couldn’t talk, however, and I was very weak. In addition to removing the growth in my thyroid, the surgeon had to remove half of my parathyroid glands, and the remaining glands had been stunned into temporary inactivity. Since my parathyroid glands were not working properly, my calcium, magnesium and vitamin D levels were extremely low, which explained why I was feeling so weak.

In addition, as the surgeon had predicted, there was minor, temporary damage to one of my vocal chords, which meant that even after I regained the ability to talk a few days after surgery, I couldn’t raise my voice for several weeks. So I couldn’t yell at the kids, big deal.

Three weeks after surgery, when I was already feeling back to myself, I underwent treatment with radioactive iodine. The treatment was simple and straightforward, and was not supposed to cause any serious side effects, other than destroying the thyroid gland.

Because the radioactive iodine emitted nuclear radiation, I had to be in isolation for seven days after the treatment, limiting my contact with other adults and avoiding children and pregnant women completely. Any items I used became contaminated, so I had to follow special cleaning procedures throughout the day and store my garbage in the house for four weeks before disposing of it.

Yitzchak took the kids to his parents for the week of my isolation, and he visited me for a short time each day. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to leave the house or have visitors, I had arranged prepackaged meals to eat during my quarantine period. It turned out, however, that I became extremely nauseated after receiving the radioactive iodine. I had to be hospitalized, which was problematic because I was considered a nuclear hazard. Yitzchak called the emergency room in advance to tell them that I was coming, but it took many hours until they actually admitted me. I arrived in the ER Friday evening, but only received a bed at two a.m., in an isolation room in the hospital’s oncology department.

Knowing that this was just an inconvenience, not a big deal, I was determined to make the best of the situation. At least no one is bothering me here, I told myself. During my previous hospital stays, I had never been able to sleep, because there were always people walking in and out of the room. This time, I had total privacy — a vacation, sort of. Other than give me nausea medication and IV hydration, there wasn’t much the hospital staff could do for me. By Sunday morning, my condition had improved enough that they felt comfortable sending me home on nausea medication, with strict instructions to drink.

After returning home from the hospital this second time, I was determined to get on with my life. I had taken two months off work, so I still had a few weeks remaining before I had to go back to my job. I was working on completing a degree, and I thought this would be a great time to study and do my coursework.

I couldn’t study at all, though. For the first time in my life, I felt that I could understand what people with learning disabilities go through. I was unable to concentrate for long periods, and I got a headache when I tried too hard. The details wouldn’t stick in my memory, either. (I learned later that the thyroid gland affects brain function, in addition to all the other things it regulates.) It took a while before my thyroid hormone levels returned to normal, with medication, and in the meantime, my concentration was shot.

I was experiencing other unpleasant side effects as well. It was difficult for me to chew my food, because my salivary glands had been damaged during the surgery and no longer functioned properly. My hands felt cold and clammy all the time, too, and my hair was falling out.

Still, I told myself that I was lucky to have gotten off with a relatively easy course of treatment. I was a little worse for the wear, perhaps, but I was sure I’d bounce back quickly.

Once my thyroid hormone levels returned to a normal level, my doctor gave me the green light to return to work. It was three-and-a-half months after the surgery, and I thought I was back to myself. But I soon discovered that I wasn’t. I had always been able to remember names and faces, and now I couldn’t. It took me much longer to answer questions and resolve issues, and I had much less patience than before.

Upon returning to work, I took over certain duties of a colleague who had gone on maternity leave, in addition to doing my own job. This workload made me feel completely overwhelmed, even though I had successfully assumed those same responsibilities and more when covering for other colleagues. I approached my supervisor and confessed, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I can’t handle all this work.”

She hired someone else to take over these extra responsibilities, but even so, I found myself struggling to keep up. At home, I was having trouble taking care of the kids and the house, and I was frustrated with myself for being so sluggish and lazy. I hadn’t felt well for a while, true, but now I was completely better. I had gotten off so easily with the treatment — why couldn’t I get back into things?

Thinking that maybe there was something wrong with me, I went to see my doctor. “I just want to get back to normal life,” I complained.

He looked at me incredulously. “What are you thinking?” he said. “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.”

“Do you realize how many body functions are affected by the thyroid?” he continued. “Weight. Body temperature. Metabolism. Concentration. Skin. Hair. Emotions. You can’t expect yourself to be the same person you used to be! Especially considering how little time has elapsed since your treatment.”

Until then, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I had been through a trauma. Because of the timing of the diagnosis, I had never really processed that I had cancer. Instead of allowing the reality of the situation to sink in, I had been busy reassuring my family — and myself — that I was fine. That I wasn’t in danger. That I was lucky to have gotten away with the lightest form of cancer possible. That I didn’t really have cancer at all.

But I had had cancer. And surgery. And treatment. And complications.

I was still suffering from the complications. I was only 28, yet this condition would affect me for life. It wasn’t just a temporary blip.

Once I dared peak beneath my façade of pragmatism, bravado, and professional bluster, I discovered other things beneath the surface. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Disappointment. All the emotions that any person with cancer would experience, no matter how “lucky” they were.

Throughout this entire ordeal, I hadn’t cried even once. Any time I had started to feel upset or agitated about my condition, I had nipped those feelings in the bud by reminding myself that this wasn’t a big deal, that other people had it much worse.

Yet it didn’t mean I wasn’t suffering. True, my situation wasn’t tragic, but it was certainly difficult and life-altering. The fact that other people had it harder didn’t mean that for me this wasn’t a big deal. It was.

I had told the doctor that I wanted to get back to normal life. But what he was telling me, essentially, was that there was no going back to the old normal. I would have to settle into the new normal, and in order to do that, I had to allow myself to feel all the sadness and disappointment that came along with letting go of what used to be.

These days, when I have to go for follow-up testing to make sure the cancer is fully gone, I let myself cry and face the fear that perhaps the results won’t be what I want them to be. I’ve learned that it’s okay to cry, and it’s okay to be scared. Even if other people are going through tougher challenges, I can admit that this is hard for me.

And that’s a big deal.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 654)