Tag: thyroid-cancer

Witness Marks

My husband loves old clocks. I’ll admit, it sounds romantic—but when he brought his first antique clock home, I was a little perplexed. The thing was beautiful: a mantel clock made of ebony hardwood, engraved with delicate filigree. Built around 1910, it required care in the form of weekly winding. He was instructed to turn two keys—one clockwise, the other counterclockwise. If he kept to a disciplined schedule, the clock kept remarkably good time and chimed faithfully on the hour. If he forgot to wind it, well… she sat uselessly on the piano where she was meant to mark the passage of time.

Aaron is disciplined, and he wound the clock regularly. On the rare occasions he forgot and the clock fell behind, he would patiently work the keys and gently move the hands back to where they belonged. One Sunday evening, Aaron went to wind the clock only to discover it was broken. The hands no longer responded to the turning of the keys. When we removed the back and exposed the inner workings, we found the problem: the coiled mainspring—an essential piece—had fractured. We had no idea how to fix it or where to find someone who could. Aaron was devastated. He was so proud of that clock and of the care he had taken to keep it running, and his disappointment made me deeply sad.

Eventually—by what means or after how long, I don’t know—Aaron found a repairman. The shop was tucked into a small, rust-colored brick building on a crowded corner of Main Street in Holiday, Utah. Inside, the space was filled with clocks of every kind: towering grandfather clocks, noisy cuckoo clocks, delicate pendulum clocks under fragile glass domes, and even a few whimsical Felix-the-Cat clocks with their tails swinging back and forth to keep time.

The clerk took our beautiful-but-broken mantel clock and warned us that repairs could take up to a year. “You have to understand,” she said, “we don’t have an owner’s manual for clocks this old. The clock will need to be completely taken apart and examined before we can even know what repairs it needs.”

Then she added, “And sometimes, we simply can’t find the parts. When that happens, the only option is to rebuild.”

In the art of clock repair, when instructions don’t exist, repairmen rely on what are called witness marks—tiny clues like faint scratches, screw holes, tool marks, or even missing pieces. Sometimes these marks are intentional, left by builders or previous repairmen. Other times they’re the result of damage. But to a trained eye, they tell a story. They guide the repair.

Through heart transplant surgery and thyroid cancer, surgeons have left plenty of visible witness marks on and within my body. Fifty years of living have left even more on my soul. I’ve been brought, many times, to what I believed were my breaking points. Life is full of them.

I don’t believe God gives us trials. I believe life is inherently hard—sometimes brutal, and for some, unspeakable. But I do believe that these hard, brutal, and unspeakable things can be used for good. They can become blessings.

In a recent conference talk by President Henry B. Eyring titled “Proved and Strengthened in Christ,” I was drawn to Philippians 4:13. Most of us know it by heart: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” What a beautiful promise.

But when I returned to the King James Version, I noticed something subtle yet profound:
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

Which—not who.

That distinction matters.

I can’t count how many times I’ve felt so low, so devastated, that in the darkness I’ve wondered: Where is He now? If Christ is the one who strengthens me, why does He feel absent when I need Him most?

It is in those moments—when we feel alone—that we are given a choice: to turn away from Christ, or to turn toward Him. And in the act of turning, in the choice to believe, we find strength.

It is in the doing that faith is strengthened. It is believing still—choosing Christ again—that fortifies us. He is with us, always, inviting us: “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This is the great initiation. This is the school where we learn to consecrate what feels entirely unholy into something redemptive. In trial—when we are stripped bare, opened up, and taken apart—we can be strengthened. Our grief can be met with love and wisdom.

And when Christ has healed us, like a master clock repairman, He will have left His witness mark.

Mountains to Climb

If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t always like the person I became while I was waiting for a transplant.

In my defense, being told you need a heart transplant is a big deal. It’s not something you can immediately absorb or cope with. I needed every minute of my 18-month wait to begin adjusting. And even then—even now—it’s still a hard thing to wrap my mind around.

In April of 2022, I was sitting in church, pondering the words I was hearing. I don’t know whether it was spoken over the pulpit or whispered by the Spirit, but I distinctly heard this instruction: Ask the Lord what you need to strengthen, and He will tell you.

So that’s exactly what I did. As I sat in sacrament meeting that day, I prayed to know what I could work on—what I needed to improve.

The answer came clearly: patience and long-suffering.

A few short weeks later, those words would become something of a mantra—though often they felt more like a chastisement—as the transplant process truly began.

The transplant team, while hopeful and supportive of organ transplantation, was very clear about one thing: transplant is not a cure. It is, instead, a trade—one disease for another. At the time, I remember thinking, Well, it’s the only chance I’ve got, so let’s get on with it. I caught the enthusiasm quickly and felt anxious to move forward.

But nothing about this process was easy.

The wait ended up being far longer—and far harder—than I had hoped.

Though I thought of myself as a patient person, this trial taught me that the Lord truly knows us better than we know ourselves. Patience was something I deeply needed to develop. And as month after month passed, I felt myself becoming less patient and more self-pitying.

In December of 2022, while casually fixing my hair in the bathroom mirror, I noticed a new lump in my neck. I immediately suspected it was my thyroid. I took a picture and sent it to my sister, asking if she could see it or if I was being overly vigilant. She confirmed that she could definitely see the lump.

I didn’t waste any time trying to schedule an appointment with my primary care doctor—but she couldn’t see me until the end of January. Feeling that this was more urgent, I scheduled with another physician who had availability in early January. Even so, I still waited nearly a month to be seen.

To my dismay, that doctor dismissed my concern almost immediately. He didn’t perform a manual exam—he simply looked and said the lump was small. I explained that one of my medications was known to be toxic to the thyroid.

“Why would you say that?” he responded. “Surely if it were toxic, you wouldn’t be on it.”

I explained that both the prescribing physician and the pharmacist had warned me of its thyroid toxicity and advised frequent monitoring. In the end, I had to ask for labs and a thyroid ultrasound. I never returned to that doctor again.

In early February, I finally had the ultrasound. While my lab results were normal, the ultrasound was not. It revealed three nodules—one of which had concerning features and was classified as TIRADS 5, meaning highly suggestive of malignancy.

That same doctor emailed me the results and suggested I follow up in a year.

Do nothing and follow up in a year? Absolutely not.

When the transplant team learned of the findings, they expedited a referral to endocrinology. In March, I went to the Huntsman Cancer Institute to meet with a specialist. He explained that thyroid cancer is often slow-growing and highly treatable, and that the suspicious nodule was still small. He gave me the option to biopsy it—or not.

I explained that because I was on the transplant list, no transplant would happen if there was even a possibility of active cancer. We needed answers—and we needed them quickly.

Right there in the office, he performed a fine-needle aspiration. Under ultrasound guidance, he inserted a long needle through my neck and into the thyroid nodule, collecting several samples for pathology. All I received for pain was a shot of lidocaine.

Little did I know, this was something I would need to get used to as a heart transplant patient.

A week later, the doctor himself called me.

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” he said, “but it is cancer.”

My transplant listing was immediately put on hold until the cancer could be successfully treated.

I cried—not because I was afraid of dying or even of cancer. Thyroid cancer, after all, is often referred to as “the good kind” because of its low mortality rate. I cried because I was exhausted. Because I was angry. Because this felt like one more blow on top of everything else.

I spiraled into the familiar Why me?

From where I stood, everyone else seemed to be living life on easy mode—vacations, goals, progress. Meanwhile, I was waiting for a heart transplant… and now dealing with cancer.

How was that fair?

And then I was reminded of the words in Ether 2:24:

“For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea…”

Here was another opportunity for God to strengthen me. Another chance for Him to deliver me. Another moment to choose faith in the Savior.

I would get through this. I would climb this mountain too.

After all, you never shout for joy from the peak of a mountain you did not have to climb.