Thyroid cancer is often called the 'good' cancer. There is nothing good about any cancer. Even though thyroid cancer is slow growing and results in proportionally fewer deaths than most other cancers, it does have significant impact on the patients.
Now new research shows that there is a significant decrease in quality of life after thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment. Personally I am very glad to see this study as I have always felt me it threw me for a (really big) loop and took me a long time to recover.
"A quality-of-life assessment tool measuring physical, psychological, social and spiritual effects was completed by all participants. Researchers also collected data on demographics, medical comorbidities, tumor characteristics and treatment methods. Most participants were recruited from survivorship groups (79.2%)."
I think that because of the unfortunate increase of thyroid cancer rates that this research was warranted.
"Distress of initial diagnosis, distress of ablation, distress from surgery, fear of a second cancer and distress from withdrawal from thyroid hormone yielded the lowest individual quality-of-life scores."
Um, I could have told you all that. Decades ago. And yes my worst fear did come true when I was diagnosed with a second cancer.
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