Good news.

Part of the family drama that I have been dealing with is that my mother was diagnosed with cancer in late December, just days before Christmas. She had a lump on her thyroid and had to have the entire thing removed to be biopsied. It came back positive for cancer.

I forget the name of the cancer. They told us that the kind she had rarely jumped cell types but that it could get into her blood stream and attach itself to her other organs. In other words a rogue thyroid cell could attach itself to her liver and grow a tumor. It wouldn't be liver cancer, still thyroid, it would just be located in the wrong spot.

For treatment they gave her some pills that made her radio active for a week. These pills were supposed to find any and all thyroid cells, kill them, and highlight them so that after a few days they would show up on a body scan. Then the doctors would be able to see if they needed to take further action against the cancer.

My parents just called me with the good news. The body scan showed that not only were the thyroid cells located ONLY in her throat but that it also appeared to have killed them all off.

She will need to go through this once more in about 6 months, just to be safe, but the doctors were confident to call her cancer free.

Maybe there is hope for 2010 yet.