Living with Thyroid Cancer

Video Transcript

My name is Eileen Grubba, and for almost 5 years I have been a thyroid cancer survivor. For about 2 years before I was diagnosed, I knew something was wrong with me. Suddenly, I was getting tired a lot and I would have night sweats. I wake up in the middle of the night completely soaking wet with sweat and I thought that's very strange, I'm too young to be dealing with menopause or anything weird like that so I don't know what's wrong with me. When they finally came back with the diagnosis, I told them they were wrong. I was, like, "That's impossible. Sorry I'm too healthy. I take good care of myself. I've been doing everything I can to prevent cancer since my mother died and my father also died of cancer." And I got angry. I remember throwing a temper tantrum all by myself in my room. You should have seen the place. I thrashed my room. And then I thought, "Good!" 'Cause when I get mad, I fight back. I decided that this was not going to take me down and I started my battle plan. The first part of the process was the surgery to remove the entire thyroid. The next thing was going through the thyroid shut down process which--that was a challenge. Then I got scared again with the radiation. That really, really frightened me. So again it was a matter of bucking up and trying to find ways to distract myself just to get through it. I was really worried about how I was going to get through this. So I started pulling together all my greatest allies who are my friends. Today, 5 years later, I still have a lot of the same people out of my support group. We have great friends here. We have a poker group of girls. We get together once, twice a month and we all help each other through everything. One of them whose mother is going through cancer stuff right now and so, we still have this fabulous support group that I know if I'm in trouble, they are all there. The most important thing for me from here on out is to make sure I keep moving forward and pursuing my dreams. 'Cause we don't know how much time we have, we never know that. And so I've got to make the most of every single day. When I'm having a bad day, I turn on my happy music. I have happy music that gets me through anything. And then I have my support groups and my friends, but the most important thing is to keep focusing on my dreams and keep creating. That keeps me positive and it keeps me moving. Go fight it. Find a way to fight it. Pull your resources together. Find a way to stay up and know that you can affect the outcome. I think a lot of people don't realize that it's just another battle. A lot of people go down because they get very sad and I think that's the worst place to go. It's understandable, but you are already dealing with enough so you might as well take it. And with the best attitude you can, so that you have a chance.