Rachel Emmilee

Reflecting... On January 6th, 2021, I was called into my Nurse Practitioner's office to discuss the results of my biopsy, and in that moment I knew the swelling on my throat wasn’t just an angry lymph node. I sat across from her as she read the report, heart pounding and face flush. My eyes were fixed on hers as she read from the paper; words I’ve never heard before. Words that really worried me. I waited and hoped she’d say a word that I could make sense of and then, she said it… Cancer. For the longest time I thought my life changed forever the day I faced a fear by walking into a busy operating room set up just for me... Or the moment I woke up without a thyroid, or the morning I took my first pill... But it was hearing the ‘C’ word. When it was said to me that day in the office.  And when I said it out loud for the first time in my Mom and Dad’s living room. That’s when my life changed forever.  A few weeks later I had a total Thyroidectomy and fifty-five lymph nodes...