I got punched in the face and found out I have cancer.
Trigger warning: mild violence and weapons mentioned. Medical details.
Idk how triggers work 🤷🏼♀️ just being on the safe side.
This is a long story. Feel free to ignore, or sit back and enjoy the shenanigans.
So last September, I (28f) was on a beach trip with a group of friends. One evening I was feeling super restless, so I went for walk on the beach after dark. I walked pretty far, and eventually passed a drunk couple that was harassing a blue heron, (shining their flashlights at it and trying to get close enough to touch it, chasing it, even throwing sand etc.) I thought for sure the heron would either fly off or attack them so I left it be. I turned around and walked back, and 45 minutes later, they are STILL harassing this poor bird.
In a very casual and friendly way, I said, “hey, leave the poor bird alone.”
The woman, aimed her flashlight at my face and said, “Or what?” Heavy on the drunken hostility.
I asked her to stop shining her flashlight in my face and she stepped up two feet away from me, flashlight still right in my eyes, and said, “Or what?” In the same tone.
Well. In an impulsive act, I knocked the flashlight to the side away from my face, but she was too inebriated to hold on to it, so it dropped from her hand into the water.
Mind you, I couldn’t see anything because of having an LED flashlight blinding me for the past few seconds, so I didn’t know she was swinging until she got me right in the eye. A wild response to dropping your flashlight but whatever.
Now. I have NEVER been in a fight. I’m rarely confrontational and am always worried about getting into trouble. I’ll stand up for what’s right, but usually I aim for de-escalation. I probably could have tried de-escalating before I knocked the flashlight, but I was in a mood. And you don’t really know how you’re going to respond to getting hit until you get hit.
But I learned that day that I hit back.
Thankfully, even though I was pretty blind, I could clock where all the noise was coming from so I immediately punched her back in the mouth. She fell back, rolling around and wailing in the sand.
The man she was with decided to get involved then and started stalking toward me saying, “hey, what the hell c***.”
Again. I’ve never been in a fight. But I have had a knife pulled on me by a man I went on a date with once when I was 18. Different story. Different time. But since then I’ve always carried a knife with me because I’m not going to win a fist fight with a man. I know my abilities, that’s not one of them.
(I used to carry pepper spray, but I had one bust in my purse once and had to throw the whole thing out and didn’t want to do that again. Plus a knife has so many more uses.)
So because I’m not dumb (usually), if I’m out by myself, I have my knife. As I did that night. So when this drunk man (with his own flashlight), stepped towards me all threatening, I flipped my knife open, pointed it at him and said, “Don’t you fucking dare.” I made sure cashed in on the generational feminine crazy and whatever my face looked like, seemed to do the trick because he put his hands up and backed off.
I then said the diabolical thing that is going to put you firmly with me or against me. I stepped over the woman (still wailing nonsense about “that b**** hit me!”), put my knife away and said to the man, “control your f****** dog” and walked off into the dark. I don’t feel bad, because she 100% deserved it and if she’s gonna chase after and attack animals and people like a dog, I’m gonna call her a dog. I hope I haunt them every time they see another heron.
Anyways. That’s only the first half of this story.
I kept walking until the adrenaline crash hit me, making sure I wasn’t followed etc. and I still had about a mile until I was back at our condo. So I sat in the sand and just breathed. Vibrating like a wet, angry Chihuahua. And believe it or not, but guess who came to keep me company, five feet away. A blue heron. Just chilling there while I rested. (I’d like to imagine he was standing guard while I recovered.)
My face hurt but that wasn’t what worried me. I was dizzy af.
You see, I’ve had 8 total concussions over my entire life, sports, clumsiness, etc. All accidents. A hammer got dropped on my head when I was 4, hit by a car at age 6, soccer, falling down the stairs, you name it.
That means that my brain is fragile and needs no more damage. I need all the remaining brain cells I have.
The punch to the eye shouldn’t be horribly damaging. But it was still a concern.
The rest of the trip was a blur. I know I was acting differently than I usually do. I know I caused concern and frustration among the friends I was there with. But we still had two more days, and it was a Bachlorette trip, (not mine) and I didn’t want to mess it up by needing to be taken to the hospital for them to tell me, yeah, just ice and ibuprofen.
On the five our drive back home I felt like I was on a boat. Sitting, standing, I was wobbly. I was worried about a brain bleed or something, so my friends dropped me off at the ER when we got back to our home city.
They did a CT scan to check for structural damage to the bone and while the punch didn’t break my face, it did deviate my septum. Haven’t been able to breathe the same since. 😒 So rude.
But right before I was sent home the ER doctor was like, “oh, btw, you have a nickel sized mass in your thyroid. You should get with your primary care and get that biopsied. Have a good day!” Bitch what?
At that time, I had just gotten married and just added to health insurance. Before then, I didn’t have health insurance for 4 years. So no, I didn’t have a primary care to call.
(And if you’re wondering where my lovely husband was through all of this, he was at home recovering from surgery removing a 7mm kidney stone. He insisted I go on the trip and honestly didn’t want me at home while he had a stint leading from his kidney to out the urethra. 😳 It was part of the reason I was in such a mood that evening I got punched because I was worried about him. Dude is a Marine Corps combat veteran, 100% medically disabled with nerve damage, cadaver parts in one knee and a handicapped license plate and said that was the worst pain he’d ever been in.)
Here is a summary of the bullshit doctor crap that lead to resolving this “mass” in my thyroid.
I spent three months waiting to get a primary care.
She tells me, Oh! Thyroid nodules (the mass) are super common. Everyone and their cousin get them! 90% of the time they are benign.
Awesome! Then I’m not worried.
She wanted to do labs first. Labs reveal nothing.
One month later she schedules an ultrasound.
It takes a month for the ultrasound clinic to give me the report which I have to then piece together MYSELF and send because they wouldn’t send it to my Dr. 🤨
It’s grown. It’s also labeled as T-RADS 5 (it only ranges from 1-5). Which is medical speak for highly suspicious.
And because I’m a biotech grad student, I read several scientific articles and studies. Even if it is cancer, it’s a really easy fix! Just take out the thyroid, no problem. Cancer free. As long as it hasn’t spread.. you know like cancer does. Which is my only concern about all of this.
It takes another month for her to get me a referral to an endocrinologist for the biopsy.
I go to that endo. Biopsy is scheduled for three weeks later and I’m told I should get the results in 3-5 days.
SIX WEEKS LATER I get the results to my biopsy. Congratulations! You have cancer. Thankfully it’s papillary thyroid cancer, which means no chemo, no harsh treatments, just removing the organ and being on meds the rest of my life. I can handle that.
By this point though, I can tell you from where the mass is sitting, it’s affecting my voice, my ability to swallow properly, and it’s like a constant pressure against my throat. I’m also tired all the time, hormonally unbalanced, moody, gaining weight then losing weight in a weird cycle, and just depressed. Because the thyroid, even though small, controls so so much.
Finally I see the surgeon a couple weeks ago. Upon doing an ultrasound himself, finds out it’s spread to my surrounding lymph nodes. We will only find out how much it’s spread after my surgery. Which is in two weeks because my surgeon actually has a sense of urgency. I’m very grateful for him.
Regardless, I’m not horribly concerned, just exasperated.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel grateful to the heron that I defended. (Who really didn’t need my help, he could have totally taken them.) I refuse to be grateful to an animal abuser that punched me in the face.
We protect the birds! 🩵😂