Some of you keen readers may recall a long time ago when I spoke about my neck on here, comparing it to the love child between Kathy Griffin and a giraffe. I still stand by that, but my neck seems to have taken great offense to it, I assume, because recently it tried to kill me. Let me explain.

About two years ago, I caught strep throat (for the first time), or streptococcus bronchialsauras, as it's more technically known. Ever since then, my throat would get hot and scratchy, like a cat on fire. I didn't know what was wrong. Then, at the end of last year, my immune system got quite bad, like real bad. I caught colds and multiple stomach bugs. I almost listed "sick" as one of my professional skills on my resume. It was bad and I didn't know why. Then, my right lymph swelled to three times its normal size. Now, they tell me size doesn't matter. In this case, it does.

This enlarged lymph node worried me. I began wondering if my ego had gotten so big that I started to grow a second head just to contain it. Turns out it wasn't a second head, it was simply a big-ass lymph node, one that didn't respond to antibiotics. That worries me even more, so I ultrasounded it like a twelve week old fetus. Since then, I've had more ultrasounds than most girls my age (combined!). I managed to confuse a couple of doctors and get some sweet inner neck pics in the process (Do you think this node makes my neck look fat?) What I didn't expect to find was a nodule on my thyroid.

That could be anything, we thought. Maybe my thyroid wanted to get 'swole' like my lymph node. The doctor disagreed and had me biopsy it, just to be safe. That's some halfway through the TV show "House" shit, like at 9:31 when someone starts bleeding from somewhere. But it was necessary, to make sure that it wasn't something more serious. Because, in an earlier test, my bilirubin was very high, which could mean cancer. I said "I haven't been this high with Billy Rubin since Hebrew school," but this was something different, the doctor told me as the results came in. That's when I found out that I had cancer. I said "Cancer? I hardly know her!"

To Be Continued............