MudRunFun Magazine Sept. 2013 | Page 11

made me feel alive again. After that day I registered in all the mud runs/ OCRs I could find. I completely had everything under control. I was working out everyday, eating healthier, and neither my Hashemoto nor my diabetes was getting in my way. Just as things started to be looking fantastic, I was hit with some news that had me stop my love affair with OCRs for a little while. As 2012 progressed, and through my constant doctors visits, it just so happened that he one day found a nodule on my thyroid. The only reason he found the nodule was for the simple fact that prior to that visit he had never sonogrammed my thyroid. Now you may think that having a nodule on your thyroid is a bad thing, but actually a multitude of people actually develop nodules on their thyroids. It’s basically a build up of muscle tissue. But of course, being a diabetic and being diagnosed with Hashemoto, my endocrinologist wanted to have my nodule biopsied also for the reason that the nodule had been found to be 1cm in diameter, which is the size in the medical community that you actually need to start worrying about. A couple months later after running several tests on the piece of nodule they had biopsied, I received the results and it was probably the hardest blow I had received up until that point in time; I was diagnosed with papillary carcinoma, the diffuse sclerosing variant (one of the rarer/more aggressive of the four variants). I was in a state of shock and it took me a long while to come to grasps with the fact that I had cancer. I became extremely introverted and really depressed. I tried to keep a mask on so my friends and family would not worry about me, but deep down inside it hit hard.