Throat Chakra Girl

The day I had my biopsy, I found myself thinking about my Nan, my grandmother. She had been diagnosed at 30 with hypothyroidism, just like I had been. She had had her thyroid removed at some point, just like I was now facing. In some ways, I felt like I was living out part of her medical history. She passed last November, which meant I was going into this blindly. She was a plethora of medical knowledge, and it felt like a cold irony that she wasn’t here to guide me. I knew she would have been all over this. That was the selfish side of my thoughts. On the other hand, I knew she had been reunited with my mother, her Shelley, who had passed 13 years prior. She struggled every day with the grief of losing a child, and now her suffering was over.

My husband had brought me to the hospital for my appointment. With the thyroid, you are given a needle biopsy that involves an ultrasound technician guiding a radiologist. A needle with a long tube is used, along with a needle for freezing.

The ultrasound technician pulled up an image of my thyroid for the radiologist to see. The radiologist laughed a little.

“Well, there is no mistaking this one, is there?”

I knew what she was referring to. This thing was big. The smaller the nodule, the less likely they can obtain a good sample. That wouldn’t be a concern this time.

Maybe she could sense my apprehension. The way my glasses were overheating because my anxiety was kicking in.

“Are you the one that found this?”

“No, my endocrinologist did.”

“Well that’s a good endo. Okay hun, we are going to start by freezing the area. That is going to be the worst part. Once that is done, I insert this needle, the sample comes down this tube and into the specimen jar. You may notice me sliding the needle back and forth while taking the sample. You won’t feel that but it is what I do to make sure I am getting as many cells as possible. I will be taking three samples. Any questions?”

I shook my head no.

“Okay let’s get started. Freezing first. You will feel a poke and some burning, okay? Remember that is the worst part.”

And it was.

“Now I am going to take the first sample. No talking or swallowing while I am doing this.”

I felt scared. I knew my heart was beating a mile a minute. It wasn’t the process so much as it was not knowing what the outcome would be. Would this be benign like it had been for so many others I knew of, or would I fall into the 3-5% who get bad news?

M had taught me to call on whomever I believed in to clear myself and my space. In that hospital room that day, I called on my spirit guides. I asked them to bring my Mom and Nan in with them, if they could. I asked that if my Mom and Nan were present, could both of them hold one of my hands. I felt a wave of emotion. I didn’t know if they were there, but I hoped they were.

She took my last sample, and made sure every last drop made it into that jar.

“Anyone who knows me, knows I am OCD about getting the best sample possible.”

I got dressed and went back to the waiting room to see my husband.

“Well this has been the worst date ever. 0 out of 10, will not be putting out.” I rubbed the little mark on my neck, that would eventually become a scar.

“Don’t worry, babe” he laughed, “I will take you on a better date next time. Everything will be fine.”

M returned a week later like she said she would. She was buzzing with energy. Her lessons started as soon as I came back into the room.

“What is going on with your thyroid is not hereditary. You don’t need to worry about passing it along to your children. Do you know that your thyroid is in your throat chakra?”

“No.”

“Well it is. The throat chakra is associated with the colour blue. Have you tried reiki before?”

“No.”

“Do you meditate?”

“No. I tried before, but I fell asleep so I thought I was doing it wrong.”

“If you fell asleep, it just meant you were going to wherever it is you need to go. It might have been to the hallway of knowledge, or even the healing beds.”

I often felt like she was speaking another language.

“I am receiving a message for you. That message is ‘boundaries’. It can apply in many ways. Boundaries in relationships, and boundaries with your energy, and who you give it to. Take this world, for example, so many horrible things are happening, and people get consumed by them. They don’t maintain their boundaries. We have a job here on Earth. Our job is to teach, to learn, to observe without absorbing, and to observe without judgement. If you judge you receive. So set boundaries in your life, and control what you consume.”

I knew what she meant on many levels. Watching the political divides, the genocides and climate crisis. It was in your face every time you went online. I wasn’t sure how to observe without absorbing.

As a people pleaser, I knew I needed to stop saying yes to things I didn’t want to, simply to avoid disappointing others, because it was taking a toll on me.

“We are given lessons in life we are meant to learn from. That is our primary purpose here. If you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it comes back again tenfold. If you continue to not learn, that is when people can end up ill. If you are ill, it forces you to slow down and listen to yourself. Listen to what the universe is trying to teach you.”

My father always said I had to learn things the hard way. Was I facing consequences for that? I had very recently turned a positive corner in my life, but maybe it had more closely resembled someone erratically veering off a highway before they miss their exit.

When her appointment was over, she lingered in my room.

“A message came through for you several times. I am meant to tell you that you are very loved.”

Me, the by-product of domestic violence. The girl who resembled no one else her family, and used to ask if she was adopted. The girl who always had felt a little sad, and never quite like she fit in. Feeling loved was, and will always be a struggle for me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I love you,” she said. Then M walked out the door, and out of my life.

As a child, my experiences with the metaphysical world were limited to playing Bloody Mary in my mirror, and religiously watching psychic Silvia Browne each week on the Montel Williams Show.

On June 30th, I was getting ready to head into work. Much like any other Monday, I felt the weekend had been too short, and I was envious that both my husband, and daughters were going to get to stay at home.

I had a cancellation in my day that had come in the day before. I was preparing myself to have to kill some time if it didn’t fill, when I saw that it had been booked.

I didn’t think anything of it, until my client walked in, let’s call her M. M was vivacious, early seventies, with a strong grandmotherly energy, and bright red lipstick. Hipster Grandma with an air of no nonsense about her.

I asked her what brought her to see me. She told me she had been to my clinic once before for massage, and in passing, my receptionist had told her that glutes and lower back were my specialty.

“I woke up this morning and my hip hurt. My guides told me ‘today is the day to go and see Amanda’”.

“I’m sorry, your what?”

“My spirit guides. They told me today was the right day.”

I was baffled. She hadn’t called into the clinic that day, she had walked through the door that morning and said she was there to see me. My receptionist was perplexed, but told her that I had a cancellation mid morning, and was welcome to come back.

“I’m a channeller.”

I knew of channellers. My husband watches a few on YouTube, who channel both the spirit realm, and extraterrestrials. I told her as much, and she perked up.

That hour was the shortest and longest hour of my life. Filled with channeling, and stories of extraterrestrials and missions, much of which she needed to receive permission to tell me. It was fascinating, and overwhelming, all rolled into one.

“You are an empath you know.”

I’d had my suspicions. Bleeding heart that cares too much and gets hurt too easily.

“The trouble with being an empath, and doing the job you do, is that you are bringing home everyone’s shit. All the reasons they come in here, from being in pain, stressed, or depressed. You absorb it all and you aren’t clearing yourself. Think of it like that character in Charlie Brown, Pigpen. You start your day clean, and by the end of it, you have everyone else’s dirt on you.”

I honestly didn’t say much. I was listening and also focusing on my work, which was quite hard when I just wanted to sit and listen to her.

“I am receiving a message that you need to be particularly cautious about protecting your energy at the gym. That place is full of negative feelings people are working through. I will show you how to clear before I leave today.”

I finished her treatment, and true to her word, she closed the door to my room and started demonstrating.

“I cleared this building and everyone in it before I came here today. I cleared you and your room. You start by calling upon whomever you believe in. Personally, Jesus is my main guy, but you could call on your guides, Buddha, whomever. I picture it as a little whirlwind spinning clockwise through your room ‘clear this space of any negativity. Clear me of any negative energy. Send me into my day with positive thoughts and positive intentions, and protect me with the golden light’. Now you do the same for your clients. Do that before you come to work, between each client and before you go home. I will be back in a week.”

I stood there, on what felt like the end of the rabbit hole while wondering, does this lead to something momentous, or am I about to spiral down into insanity. Either way, I was curious, and so I began clearing.

After relentlessly refreshing the website for my ultrasound report, the results were in. I had two nodules on my thyroid. One was 3cm with an intermediate malignancy risk, and the second was .5cm with the highest malignancy risk. The suggested steps were to have a needle biopsy on the larger one, since the smaller one was too small to get a good sample from.

I was back in the stuffy office of the little man who had found my nodule in the first place.

“Are you having trouble swallowing?”

I could feel my 12 year old kid sense of humour just itching to make that into something dirty.

“Not that I have noticed.” It hadn’t seemed like the time to be inappropriate.

He put through my biopsy request and marked it as urgent. It was April, in our lagging healthcare system, that meant my appointment was booked for September. Apparently the radiologist who administers the biopsy, prioritizes the scheduling based on perceived urgency. I asked to be put on a cancellation list, and ended up securing a date in July. Nothing to do but wait.

-George Will

As a child, I was the kid who tested patience, pushed boundaries, and just had to do the thing you had been told not to do.

So as I went to my ultrasound to see just how big my new found friend was, I knew I was going to push for information my ultrasound technician was obligated not to give me. No harm, no foul, right?

I laid down on the crinkly, noisy paper, and took some deep breaths. Everything about medical offices makes my blood pressure shoot up until I can hear my heart beating in my ears.

“Think positive”, my husband had told me that morning. “Everything will be fine.”

He was always so sure, and yet, I knew, based on my exhausting brain calculations, that there were precisely eleventy-seven ways this could turn out, and at least three of them ending with my demise.

When my ultrasound was done, I decided to see what bits of information I could get from my technician, something that would put my mind at ease. Patience has never been my virtue.

“Did you see anything?”

“Oh yes. The nodule is quite large. Actually, come closer to me. Oh! I’m surprised you can’t see it when I look at you!”

She must have seen my shock.

“You are the one that discovered this, yes?”

“No, my endocrinologist did. It is really that big that you thought you could be visually able to see it?”

“I thought maybe you could. It’s not too big. You will get the report shortly.”

I just had to dig for information, didn’t I? I felt worse leaving than I had going in.

-Don Marquis

I’ve been a registered massage therapist for 18 years. My profession is intimate, and has made me privy to all kinds of knowledge, and information. I have clients of all races, religions, and sexual orientations. A very diverse group, that as a collective, has been a plethora of knowledge.

Last year a regular client of mine came to see me. We both have a thyroid condition called hypothyroidism, and she too, works in healthcare. She asked when I would be seeing my endocrinologist next. When I told her that I didn’t have an endocrinologist, she said I should be seeing one annually with the condition I have.

I went to my physician with that information and she sent off a referral. As a seasoned procrastinator, I thought I was being proactive for once.

Months later I was sitting in a stiflingly hot room, in front of a tiny man in a two piece suit. During his intake, he asked if I had temperature regulation issues, whether I typically feel hot or cold. I decided to make a joke of it, as I looked over at the draft stopper placed along the door’s base, keeping even the slightest bit of air from coming through, “well, I am typically cold, except for right now”. He didn’t laugh.

He wanted to examine my thyroid and I felt my anxiety taking hold. She can be such a sneaky bitch, rearing her head at the most inopportune times. I couldn’t figure out why I was anxious, it was just standard procedure lite, yet here I was, stress sweating. Picturing my sister teasing me about ending up with swamp ass, or swass, as she affectionately calls it.

After the exam he has me sit down, and tells me he wants me to return in 3 months. He gives me a requisition form for blood work, and an ultrasound. It is then that he tells me he felt a mass on my thyroid. Very nonchalantly. He continues on as if time hasn’t stopped for him, as it had for me.

“Hold on, can you back up a minute? You felt something on my thyroid?”

“Yes, there is a nodule on the right side.”

“Should I be concerned about that?”

“Well that is why I am sending you for an ultrasound.”

I walked out of that room wondering if my idea of being proactive had been a ruse, after all.