CNN
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Medical student Sally Lohan, who had a week-long pink surgical scar scarred several inches down her neck, said she had somehow never had a scar until now.
“This is a first for me,” Lohan, a second-year medical student at the New Jersey-based Rowan Virtua College of Osteopathic Medicine, told CNN on Thursday. “I don’t know how I got through life so unscathed until I got this big scar on my neck at 27 years old.”
Lohan, from Ukiah, Calif., said she underwent surgery to remove her entire thyroid on Dec. 6 after being alerted in an ultrasound class to what was later diagnosed as thyroid cancer.
In November 2022, Lohan, a 25-year-old first-year medical student, discovered this by chance while playing the role of a patient in class. Lohan said she and her classmates were learning how to use ultrasound to test the thyroid.
“We would get on the bed and practice with each other in small groups, so I would get on the bed and my friend would hold the probe up and look at my thyroid,” Lohan said. .
Lohan, who was able to see the monitor herself, recalled seeing her thyroid gland appear to be “all over the place.”
“'What's wrong? This tissue doesn't look like it did in the video we watched before this class,'” Lohan remembers saying.
The instructor identified what Lohan saw as a nodule and recommended that she see her doctor.
“We go to medical school, so (she) sent it to Student Health to hear what the students had to say,” Lohan said.
She was advised to see her doctor again, but at that point she was less than three weeks away from turning 26, when she would be removed from her parents' health insurance in California.
“I had a plan for how to get health insurance in New Jersey, but I didn't know how long it would take,” Lohan said.
A doctor in California said he would order blood tests, but recommended that he wait until he had insurance again to undergo imaging and more detailed testing of his thyroid.
During that time, school took priority. Lohan said she wasn't too worried after being told her thyroid levels were normal and thyroid cancer was “not that bad.”
The 5-year relative survival rate is Papillary thyroid cancerAccording to the American Cancer Society, Lohan, who was later diagnosed with the disease, has a more than 99% chance of developing the disease. There was no history of thyroid cancer in her family, she added.
“I don't think[my doctor]wanted to wait a year, and that's what we ended up doing,” she said.
Lohan said she was finally able to get an ultrasound after securing health insurance and a new doctor a few months ago.
She said she was playing pickleball with a friend when she received a notification of a new message on her medical records app.
Provided by: Sally Lohan
In the photo on the left, Sally Lohan looks at a thyroid ultrasound. The image on the right shows the surgical scar after her thyroid was removed.
“The radiologist looked at my ultrasound and said, 'There are some nodules on her thyroid that look like cancer. And it looks like the cancer has spread bilaterally to the cervical lymph nodes. ','' Rohan said.
The message scared her.
“Even in that moment, I thought, 'Okay, this is thyroid cancer, and it doesn't usually kill people,'” Lohan said. “But we didn't think, 'What if it moves around?'” For example, what if it spreads elsewhere? ”
After quickly scheduling a biopsy with the help of doctors at the medical school, Lohan said her gratitude for being so close to getting answers outweighed her fear of what was to come. Told.
After a biopsy confirmed it was likely cancer, she said she scheduled surgery with a specialist experienced in thyroid and adrenal gland surgery.
“She was great and made sure that I could take time off to work around my school schedule and that I didn't have to be late if I didn't want to,” Lohan said. said.
Lohan said she is still not completely free of the disease and will need to continue taking thyroid hormones to replace the lost thyroid gland.
“I don't think anyone wants to fulfill my wishes,” she said. “When they did a lateral neck dissection to remove the cancer from my lymph nodes, they found more than I expected. This was unexpected.”
Lohan said she believes her cancer experience will shape the way she serves patients when she becomes a doctor.
“I think it’s more empathetic,” she said. “I think it has made me a more empathetic person in general, and definitely as a future doctor.”
