Thyroid Cancer: Roger Holzberg's Story Video

Thyroid cancer affects the thyroid gland in the body. Learn more about Thyroid cancer and what it is like to live with it in this video.

Take Action

Set goals
Stay focused
Look ahead

About this Author

Roger Holzberg was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer in 2005.

ROGER HOLZBERG: My name is Roger Holzberg and I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer almost four years ago. The symptoms for me were really subtle. I had spent a long time in the gym taking care of myself the last couple of decades before my 50th birthday, and I'm on the shy side of that birthday and suddenly I gained six pounds. I haven't changed my diet or my exercise routine. I hit an energy wall about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I ignored those symptoms for a couple of three months and then suddenly a voice inside my head said: Don't ignore them. Something is wrong. Figure out what it is and deal with it. I call it the terror moment. There's no way to describe that primal moment of terror when a doctor sits you down and says: You have cancer. Everything about your life changes in that moment. You go into shock. You don't hear words that come out of their mouths. There's a doctor sitting across a desk from you telling you things that you're supposed to remember because they're the things you're supposed to do the next day or the phone calls you're supposed to make. Sometimes that shock lasts for a couple of minutes, a couple of hours. I would guess I was in shock for a couple of days. So thyroid cancer doesn't leave you many options. You get a thyroidectomy and you lose your thyroid gland. Your thyroid gland is what controls your metabolism and your temperature among other things. Without it, you don't metabolize food. You can't keep warm, and that means that you then go on synthetic hormones for the rest of your life. Support after diagnosis is critical. My initial support group was my dad, my stepmom and my sister, not my kids. I didn't want my kids to know until I was a hundred percent sure of the prognosis because I didn't want to put that responsibility on them. So my team was my family. It was my medical professionals and it was the folks at work who needed to know and it was one person at a place of faith. My endocrinologist gave me a really smart piece of wisdom when I went into radiation. She said: Set three goals for your next year and tell me what they are when you come out. And when I came out she said: What are your three goals? I said: I'm going to do three triathlons by my next birthday. She said: Why don't you set some realistic goals? And I said: You know what? I just did. And if you're not going to help me get there, I got to find another endocrinologist. And she said: Okay, there's no book for 50-year-olds who go back to doing triathlons, but I'll help you figure it out. The greatest encouragement I can give is to tell you that you're not alone. You're facing a major health challenge, and other people have been there before you and gotten through it. Break it up into pieces. Make each piece manageable, set goals for each piece and work through them one at a time.

Thyroid Cancer: Roger Holzberg's Story Video

Take Action

About this Author

Member Comments