Kate Stowell

As of 9:00am, kate’s surgery has started. More info as it is available.

Today is Daniel’s 4 month birthday, and also his well baby appointment. I am hoping that will keep my mind off of things, but am also waiting eagerly to hear back on initial MRI results from yesterday. Today is also a difficult day, because over the past few days, I’ve had to stop breast feeding “cold turkey.” The reason is that once the radioactive iodine is administered, it can go straight to my milk ducts, in result, giving me breast cancer. It’s been very difficult for multiple reasons, but necessary. Fortunately, I’ve stockpiled so much milk, I don’t anticipate there being any issue bottle feeding him until 1 year like with Ethan. I’ll post more if I hear any further news.

I decided that between Todd (my husband) and I, we could blog about the events that have been going on, and keep everyone in the know about how my treatment is going. For those of you who don’t already know, I was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer on Thursday, July 30th, 2009. This is my second instance of cancer. Roughly 12 years ago, I was diagnosed and treated for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

From the needle biopsy, all signs show that this is Papillary Thyroid Cancer, which is typically very treatable. It involves full removal of the Thyroid, followed 6 weeks later by radioactive iodine to kill any remaining cancerous tissue and/or cells. For a period of time, every 6 months, I will be evaluated to ensure it has not returned.

So, while the posts may be few and far between, I would like to get this information out there. I especially want mothers of young children who may be experiencing the same situations to know that there is someone else out there with the same diagnosis. It is unusual for someone my age (27) to be diagnosed, but again, knowing that there are others out there can maybe bring someone hope and words of encouragement. Please feel free to ask questions by leaving comments in each post, and I will try to either respond myself, or have Todd do it.

You can also follow my status updates, which are generated from this web site on Twitter. Just follow @katestowell or go to http://www.twitter.com/katestowell for more information. This will alert you in the form of a Tweet any time a new posting is made to this web site.

Again, thank you for visiting, your words of encouragement, and thank you for taking the time to read my story.

~ Kate