It was there all along
6 months post-partum, my doctor notice a lump on my throat. We waited out breast-feeding, let the hormones settle. We ultra-sounded, we biopsied. It was a benign mass on my thyroid, something to monitor. Nothing to take care of with an infant at home. Of course it stayed with me, in this limbo.
Years went by. Infant to toddler to little boy. Other than my kiddo growing, so was the mass. At some point, we’d likely consider removal, but for now, monitoring was still sufficient.
Sometime last year, removal presented itself (again) as the best option. While there wasn’t a timeline on it, someone forcing my hand, I felt a sudden sense of urgency. Was it a rush if the nodules (now plural) were benign? Why now, when I felt fine?
I asked myself all of it repeatedly but this pull toward now was not going away. It wasn’t dramatic but it was consistent enough that I paved the path myself, interviewed surgeons I’d googled to find the best (which to me is the one who listens and gives me agency and empowerment in my process). In the middle of some of the busiest and hardest times of my professional career. And while I had envisioned this happening when Sebi was a bit older and self-sufficient, this didn’t feel like something I could neatly schedule or delay.
Do it now made me stop trying to make it make perfect sense. So I listened, as I’ve been doing more than ever in my life before. I spent the last few months ritualizing the lead in and paving the path for creating the same on the recovery side.
—
We just did the thing, a few days ago. I walked myself in. “There’s no one here with you” I kept getting asked? “No”. And that was ok. There was no fear; I had done the preparation work.
It went well despite “minor complications,” which, depending on who you ask, were a little more eventful than that, but overall, a success. The breathwork, mantras, meditation paid off.
And then I got the call.
The masses we had been watching? Benign. But on the organ itself, separate from all of that, there it was. Cancer. It was there all along. Not something we had seen beforehand. Contained. And now completely removed. And, admittedly, a lot easier to look at in the eye in hindsight.
—
That was the moment the whole thing landed. Because suddenly, “why now?” wasn’t a question anymore. There. Quietly. The entire time. Something in me had clocked it.
—
Right before the surgery, a friend said to me, “What do you mean you won’t feel different? Your body wakes up every day with something foreign in your throat - in the space of your voice, your truth, your expression. Imagine not having that there.”
At the time, I understood it intellectually.
On this side, I fully get it.
—
I keep thinking about how much we want certainty before we act.
But more often than not, the body knows before the mind can explain it. It senses what’s already there. Follow it, always, even when the answer only arrives after the decision has already been made.