TV Show RPA

[Guest guest]

A couple of weeks ago I promised to let everyone know what happened to

the thyroid patient on the

Aussie hospital reality program RPA. I was convinced the doctors were

going to take this girls thyroid out for no reason...in actual fact she

had a nodule with a tumour on it. She said her symptoms were tiredness

and fatigue. I was correct in that it was fairly gory and it did take 2

weeks of this program to show what actually happened. The patient did

have to ingest some radioactive substance, then a couple of hours later

a small

probe went around and showed where exactly the tumour was located. It

was in actual fact quite deep and as this poor girl had already had 2

previous ops on her thyroid, they were sceptcal about even finding it

and kept stressing to her that they couldn't guarantee her voicebox

wouldn't suffer after their probing about. (I just love the way they try

and cover themselves).

Fast forward to week 2 and my own thyroid was feeling particularly sore

while I was watching this!! The viewers may as well have been in the

operating theatre too, they showed the whole procedure, which no-one

else in my house could watch. The surgeons did get her tumour out; it

was HUGE, possibly 20 to 30 times larger than a usual tumour of this

type. Eeeewwww!

She said immediately after the op she felt better (gee I was sceptical

of this too!). Now having had 3 operations on her thyroid she has one

heck of a scar on her neck.

As I was having an ultrasound on my own thyroid the very next day, I was

beginning to think I should not have watched this at all.

Alison

Melbourne, Australia