My Own Retrograding - Hand in Hand with Mercury

Mercury Retrograde
has spanned he period
May 19 – June 11, 2015. Coincidentally (or not) I've had a bit of a re-tracing exercise going on during this exact span - unintentionally organised too, I should add.

Regular readers might recall my tale of woe about an accident I had while in New Mexico in late March (see here).

I refrained from taking the advice of the radiologist in New Mexico who seemed intent on putting the Fear of Dog into yours truly, by referring to two masses around my throat area, revealed by the CT scan they rushed me into. By the time I'd gathered my senses on the way back to our hotel, I was confident that the problems were not as dire as all that. I'd coughed up a piece of nasty caused by the blow to my throat, which could possibly account for one mass, on my epiglottis, and the other on my thyroid had been investigated several years ago and found to be benign. So...as my voice and throat gradually returned to normal over several days, I resisted going to regale my own doctor with the preliminary findings and disc of the New Mexico CT scan. I already had a Mid-May appointment for twice-yearly blood-work, plus a followup chat with our GP, so I decided to wait for that.

Bloodwork came up all okay. On telling the Doc my tale of woe, he thought for a while and decided it'd be eminently reasonable for me to go see the local ENT specialist. I did so on 28 May. My tale of woe was told - again. ENT Doc inspected my throat closely, flicked with a needle-ish tool a quite large grain of hardened "stuff" from a fold in my left tonsil (maybe the remaining part of the mass on my epiglottis?) He said that such things form from time to time, nothing to worry about. His nurse approached with another dangly tool- with this one he entered my nostril and travelled down into my throat for a "good look around". He declared all to be well, nothing untoward there. His remaining concern was the thyroid thing. He asked had any of my relatives had thyroid cancer. No, they hadn't! I referred him to the fact that I'd had an ultra-scan back in 2006, which had shown no malignancy, but he still felt it necessary to go a wee bit further and have a biopsy done. He explained this procedure to me very carefully - likely to be fairly painless, thyroid entered from outer neck - a fine needle which will "suck" a few cells to be investigated. I wasn't overjoyed at this prospect.

On 4 June, bright and early (well, early) we were at the radiology dept of our excellent hospital. The whole thing was, as the doctor who performed the biopsy said as he bounced into the room, "quick, easy and painless". He uttered the best words of this adventure so far: "these things are usually benign". I did note the word "usually", but the fact that he said the word benign cheered me no end!

Follow-up appointment with ENT Doc for results was yesterday afternoon, 10 June, almost at the end of Mercury Retrograde. Even though I originally felt pretty confident that all was well, I still had lingering doubts, pushing my BP up sky high before I eventually saw the nurse, who kindly reassured me that "there's nothing bad in the report". ENT Doc eventually showed up and confirmed that I have a benign nodule on the left thyroid. He advised that it'd be wise to keep an eye on it via an ultra-scan initially in 6 to 8 months, then maybe annually, to make sure the nodule wasn't growing and causing problems with other bits and pieces in the left throat area.

So...all's well that ends well...and it ended almost in harmony with Mercury's latest back tracking exercise.