I was working in Holland, Michigan, while going to Booth on the weekends, driving back and forth every week. I began to show symptoms such as exhaustion—but it was easy to blame everything else. I thought I was working too hard.
I realized something was wrong over the holiday break between the Autumn and Winter Quarters my third and final year, in 2020. I noticed what I thought looked like a knot in my neck that started to get bigger and bigger. During the third week of January, just after classes had restarted, I went to the doctor.
The first visit was casual. They confirmed there was a bump, but told me that there were lots of things it could be, so it wasn’t too alarming. On a Monday, I had the biopsy, and on Friday afternoon, I heard from the doctor.
I was driving when I got the call, so I pulled over to a parking lot, and that’s where I learned that I had thyroid cancer. It’s one of those things where even when you think you might have it, you don’t actually think that it’s real. Everything else kind of pauses. What I remember most is that the doctor said, “I hope you have a good weekend.” I don’t know how you can do that after such news, but I said, “Thank you.” I skipped school that weekend and went to my parents’ house.
About three weeks later, I had surgery to remove my thyroid. The cancer had spread into different lymph nodes, into my neck, and under my collarbone. It was Stage 2. I had to do a radiation treatment as well, but by the time I healed from the surgery, we were in the pandemic, so it was delayed until the following September. I was already staying home and staying away from others to recover when everything was shut down.