Thursday, February 18, 2010

My brother has thyroid cancer


As a full-time student it's all too easy to stop taking care of "things," like exercise and oil changes and calling friends and family on their birthday. Yesterday I noticed on my computer it was Feb. 17, and I thought, "Damn, I missed my brother's birthday," which had been the day before. Oh well, back to work.

Come to find out later that he had a pretty terrible 38th birthday, as he found out he has thyroid cancer. Of course, now I feel really bad about not calling. There seems to be no cause for alarm, though. It's a small tumor, so they'll just remove the thyroid and put him on pills forever. He may have to watch what he eats, too.

His doctor recommended that our other brother and I get an ultrasound. I had coincidentally made an appointment with Yale Health Services for when I get back from Australia, so I'll discuss this then. Anyway, my takeaway from all this is that, no matter how busy I am, (a) I will try harder to make those birthday calls, and (b) I need to visit my brother more often. I haven't been since Thanksgiving, and he's only two hours away. Ridiculous.

No comments:

Post a Comment