Thyroglobulin

Yuweijade

I had a TT in 2007 . Papillary. Two bouts of RAI. My thyroglobulin has been negative. Now my doctor wants. Me to have an ultrasound and thyrOgen injection blood test. Is this normal . If I'm already negative why should I go through more testing.  please advise )

Baldy

Sonogram and Thyrogen Tests

Hello,

The Sonogram your doctor is asking you to do is no big deal and is routine.  My TT was in 2/2011, and I've had two so far.  You lie on a bed for a half hour or so while the tech pushes a sonogram sensor over your neck.  My understanding is I will have at least one a year for the foreseeable future.  Don't get worked up over anything the sonogram techs say while they are looking, the last time I had one they made it sound like I had a bunch of suspicious looking lymph nodes on both sides of my neck.  Turns out they were mostly wrong, I did have one suspicious node but not as many as they made me think I had from their chatter and questions.  Wait for the radiologist to make his report, I didn't and I had a scary couple of days!

The Thyrogen test is more involved but is also routine, I had one one year after my TT.  One of these tests is normal, many of the people in this group have said they've had it twice, so they may ask you to take it again in another five years {since that's how long they waited this time}.

I'm guessing the reason they've waited this long to ask you to take these tests in comparison to me is that thyroid cancer is so slow growing, it may take this long for residual cancer {if there is any, hopefully not} to grow enough to be noticable.  They may have started sooner with me since they knew mine had already metastisized to lymph nodes in my neck.

Alan