Stage Three: The Surgery

The ENT surgeon and the oncologist at ESI finally put a name to the stage, if not the cancer itself. Stage 2. That was all they could say. It had crossed Stage 1. They didn’t know exactly what kind of cancer yet, but they knew enough to be stern with us. They scolded our family for not bringing her in sooner, for not testing sooner. But how could we explain that we had gone to the hospital, only for them to waste months of our time? Two, maybe three months lost in referrals and false starts. It was only after being assigned to ESI that we began to get real answers.

At the previous hospital, they had juggled my grandma and my aunt like pieces on a chessboard — a week of moving her between the OT and the ward, never operating. They were scared to put her under anesthesia because of her hypertension. They stalled. But at ESI, the difference was night and day. The doctor was seasoned, calm, and confident. He was patient with her. When it came time, he did it in one go. He took her from the ward, put her under anesthesia, performed the total thyroidectomy, and removed the entire lump from her throat. He preserved the specimen in aldehyde for the biopsy that would finally tell us what this was.

When she woke up, she had a new mark on her body — a large scar curving around her neck like a necklace. In some ways, it was harder on her than the lump had been. It didn’t matter how old she was. Aesthetics still matter because dignity matters. She wasn’t vain; she just didn’t want to be stared at or whispered about. And in a family and a society where everything is tied back to karma and judgment, that scar felt like another kind of exposure.

She no longer had a thyroid gland. The thing that had been making her sick was gone, but so was the part of her body that balanced her hormones. She was started on thyroid-stimulating hormone medication and calcium supplements to replace what her body could no longer produce. For the rest of her life, she would take those pills — a daily reminder of the battle she hadn’t asked for.