Cancer Survivor Delivers Message of Prevention for Women
Only three months after her divorce, Aurora Casablanca, a young communications professional, went through one of the most difficult experiences of her life. Alone and in charge of her one-year-old son (who is now 6), she blamed her unusual fatigue, weight gain, and hair loss to the stress she was undergoing at the moment. But a cold led her to resort to a different specialist than the one she used to visit. After he examined her throat the presence of nodules was detected. “My blood tests always came out negative and I had no hormonal imbalances, but there where nodules. So the doctor decided to run some tests to find if they were cancerous and referred me to an endocrinologist”, she tells about the moment she began suspecting something was wrong with her thyroid gland.
Doctors spent three months running medical tests, including a needle biopsy. “They had to remove the nodules or the thyroid gland. Since I had a one-year-old child, I decided, ‘I'm not going through this again, I’ll have the entire gland removed,’” she recalls. “When they tell you its cancer, you automatically think you’re going to die,” she admits.
Her doctor ran a diagnosis in November and set the operation for February. “I told my doctor I couldn’t go another three months thinking I had cancer,” she confesses. The doctor reconsidered, and a week later, Aurora was in the operating room. She acknowledges that her recovery was mostly emotional, because she felt well almost immediately. “At that moment, instead of thinking about yourself you think about those close to you,” she confides.
Nowadays, Aurora is healthy and undergoes follow-up examinations to make sure she continues to be cancer-free. She makes sure that she and her son eat organic foods and watches out for carcinogens.
A Preventive Message “After my experience, I sometimes believe I am a psychologist for thyroid cancer patients. Every time I encounter someone going through this process, especially women, I encourage them to get checked. If you’re feeling sick, tired or different, ask for a sonogram because blood tests are not 100% reliable. It wasn’t until I underwent palpation tests and sonograms that they detected the nodules,” she concludes. Both men and women should reflect about Aurora’s experience, and understand that prevention is key for a healthy life. Also, make sure you have cancer insurance, so you can be financially secure to face unexpected situations.
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