It was a good day.

Mayo is huge.  And Busy.  We've said multiple times we feel like we're in an airport. 

I kind of wish everyone would wear a sign around their neck with the reason they're here. There are a LOT of people here.  And I'm guessing that no one is just vacationing in Rochester, Minnesota in February. 

Our first appointment this morning was bright and early at 8am.  After we parked in the completely wrong ramp and had to walk through a maze of buildings and tunnels we made it to the 12th floor of the Gonda Bullding at Mayo.  

The first doctor pretty much shocked us right off the bat: I do not have the rare and weird medullary thyroid cancer, I have regular old papillary thyroid cancer, stage ONE.  The pathologists at Mayo re-did all of the pathology from my surgery at Spectrum, double and triple checked, and concluded that my original diagnosis was wrong.  That's a really really good thing.  

Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is likely a result of the radiation I had three years ago, but he also said this type of cancer takes 2-5 years to get to the current state its at now, and some people never even know they have it.  Basically - no one dies from PTC.  

I had a blood draw and an ultrasound of my neck, followed by a 1.5 hour long meeting with an endocrinologist with a Scottish accent.  He said things like "it's bloody cold" and "bollocks" and randomly swore at the people in Grand Rapids who, according to him, had no idea what they were doing.  It made the conversation that much more interesting.  He comfirmed that we have the top surgeon for the type of surgery we are doing, like the very best in the whole country. There will be some drugs required to fill in for my missing thyroid, but overall this is, once again, one of the better cancers to be have to deal with.  So now I have had two of the "best kinds of cancer to get".  Points for me. 

Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow sometime.  We are anticipating two nights of recovery and discharge on Friday.    Thanks for all of your support, thoughts and prayers as we deal with this.

We will update again tomorrow!