And so it begins...

It was moving day! I was so exhausted i couldn't haul another box up the 3 flights of stairs to my door. Chalk it up to a whirlwind week of packing, stressful meetings at work, terribly little sleep and an even worse diet - right? As i hauled my booty out of bed to unpack the maze of boxes, i brushed off the exhaustion and the aching muscles and got to work. By the end of the weekend I had unpacked nearly everything and the place was starting to feel like home!

On Monday i was back to work shrugging off the muscle pains and popping motrin here and there to keep moving. During a lull in the action i decided a mini neck massage would work wonders... wait...what was that?! There was a painful bulge in my neck just above my collar bone...this is totally not normal! Could i have pulled a muscle in my neck somehow causing it to want to shoot out of my neck?! I called my mom [and my own personal nurse] with a mini freak-out. She assured me that i was over reacting and that she was sure i was fine... maybe i had caught a 'bug' and my lymph nodes were swollen... ok sure, she would stop by tonight and check it out only to prove i was a nutjob.

So she came over and her reaction was more of the 'what the heck IS that?' than 'yup, you just got a bug' variety. After some discussion it was decided that if it didn't go down/stop hurting/stop half choking me when i ate by Tuesday, I would call the doctor.

Now my doctor is fabulous, he is super funny, laid back, super smart, and doesn't mess around...which is why he is always so stinkin busy! I was told he was booked but that I could head over to Urgent Care to be checked if i thought it was necessary. Well by this point i had looked up my symptoms on WebMD and decided that i had some extremely rare disorder so of course i headed to the UC. In the waiting room i watched the swine flu epidemic unfold while anxiously awaiting my name. I was called back, my vitals were taken and soon a lovely MD was in to see me. He took a look and had me swallow while pressing on the lump [not comfortable at ALL mind you!] and quickly ordered me an EKG, xray and lab tests. Apparently my heart rate was over 100 resting which is not good and is ridiculously high for me, hence the EKG. The xray and lab work covered everything else. Oh yeah and at that point he also said 'You most likely need a biopsy of your thyroid and should follow-up with your doctor in 1-2 days.' Uhm....

In my world, biopsy = not good. My grandparents, dad, aunt... all had biopsies...all had cancer.

So i called my most wonderful doctor again and was able to squeeze an appointment into his day off [i wasn't the only patient he saw that day..i told you he is fabulous!]. He took a look and had me do the swallow while pressing thing too - again not fun - and said i needed to talk to Surgeon and he will most likely do a biopsy of my thyroid nodule. Ok so it now has an official name i could Google! Dangerous.