I’m a 34 year old male and recently diagnosed with Papillary Cancer.
I was so happy with my life busy with my healthy lifestyle, running marathons, and century bike rides, all of a sudden whole world came down upon me. During My Endo suggested me to find a good surgeon and finally with my office colleague’s recommendations I came to know about the endocrine surgery department of UCLA. During my first call I was told I can have an appointment with Dr. Avital Harari after a week on June 2012. On my first visit I was pleased with the confidence and assurance given to me by Dr. Harari. Knowledge makes a person confident no doubt about it. She looked at my old reports and did an ultrasound on my thyroid to see if the lump has spread to other lymph nodes or not during the same visit. She told me not to worry & that as I’m quite young so the prognosis of this type of cancer is better upto 97%. She also mentioned that there can be some complication risks of 1-3% during my thyroidectomy which really scared me, (I know all surgery has some complications), as all ready I got something to worry about and with the added complications I’ll be doomed.
I got surgery date after 2 month after my visit. Before my surgery date hospital staff called me to get the pre operation tests done. On surgery day everyone visited me including Anesthesiologist to let me know what will be the procedure & how long will I be out.
And with all my happiness and thanking words my surgery went perfectly well without any complications. I’ll be always thankful to Dr. Harari for saving my life and her expertise in handling the difficult surgery with ease and perfection. My experience with UCLA is very good and I must say for those first timers, you are in safe experienced hands and need not worry ( because I was worried a lot for the first surgery). Hopefully one day a magic bullet will be invented to kill the cancer.