My name is Patrick Coleman; I am a 34-year-old middle-class, blue-collar worker. My life took a very unexpected shift in June of this year. While enjoying a warm spring evening with a friend, I rubbed my neck and realized there was a large mass I had never felt before. Of course, as a guy in his early 30s, I shrugged it off as a "probable nothing" sort of deal. That's where I was very wrong.

About a week later, I decided to get my newfound little buddy checked out. I contacted my PCP, and she decided we should get some imaging done to understand better what we were looking at. After a CT scan and several Ultra Sounds, we found that I had a 6.3 x 2.2 x 1.2 cm mass on my left thyroid lobe. Now I know what you're wondering, how in the world did you not notice this sooner? The best I can tell, between having a massive beard at the time and having a rule of not touching my neck for irritable skin reasons, I missed it.

Now that we had found half a tennis ball in my neck, we decided to dig a little deeper, and my physician ordered an FNA or fine needle biopsy. That test came back inconclusive, as many FNAs do. Still, with a mass that size, we opted to pull the trigger and have it removed.

Now major surgery was not the first thing that bothered me when I found this out; It was removing a significant part of my endocrine system that regulates our bodies. I was assured that losing only one-half of your thyroid is not significantly detrimental and that many people live their everyday lives without needing thyroid hormone replacement.

On October 18th, I was admitted to the Day surgery center in St Paul, MN and had a Left Thyroid Lobectomy performed. A massive shout out to my surgeon Mark Sneider MD. He did a fantastic job on such a large mass. I feel very blessed to have him as my surgeon for many reasons, one being I never lost my voice as some patients do. After the surgery, I quickly realized that my recovery from this would take more time than I had anticipated. I was ok with this because I had claimed short-term disability. It wasn't a ton of compensation but enough to almost pay the bills for a few weeks, and my savings would fill in the rest. Now, all I could do was wait to hear back from Pathology and hope for a clean result.

On October 25, I got the call I was dreading. Dr. Sneider called me personally to deliver the news. The mass on my Thyroid was an extensive Follicular Carcinoma with some scattered Papylary Carcinoma mixed in. I was devastated; any optimism I had up till that point completely fell through. He recommended we move quickly and remove the other half of my Thyroid as well. He told me he could do it on the 27th at United Hospital, not only two days later, and I said let's go.

On October 26th, I was getting myself prepared for another surgery. I did some laundry, cleaned the house, and ate a great meal before I began my pre-op fasting. Since I was still recovering from the first surgery, I decided to take a nap. About an hour later, I woke up in an absolute panic. I opened my eyes to my heart pounding, a warm blanket running across my neck, and a sensation of half-consciousness. I immediately knew something was very wrong. I sat up, and it felt like someone was pushing their knuckles into my windpipe. I ran to the mirror and noticed a 3-inch mass where my surgical incision was protruding from my neck. I was rushed to the ER, where we performed an emergency CT scan and found that I had post- Op internal bleeding in my neck or a Hematoma. Due to the risks involved, I was admitted to United Hospitals Surgical wing for observation to see if we could perform the surgery the next day as planned.

I woke on the morning of the 27th in the hospital and was greeted by my surgeon. He assured me that taking care of the Hematoma would be simply part of the completion Thyroidectomy that we already had planned. I agreed that we should push forward and continue with surgery. In the afternoon, we successfully removed the rest of my Thyroid. I was discharged later that evening and was thrilled to sleep in my own bed.

After two major surgerys and a hematoma, my body was brought to its knees. My worries about Thyroid loss had come to reality, and the physical and mental trauma had taken its toll. I was defeated. Despite this, I still needed to figure out my responsibilities for the days ahead. I knew that I would need a minimum of three more weeks away from work to recover. If only life could be put on hold for these things, it could not. I did the books and realized that even with my short-term disability, my immediate bills and expenditures would not be met. On top of this, despite my reasonable medical insurance, I still accumulated up to $6000.00 of out-of-pocket expenses from the surgery and ER visit. That is on top of existing payments that I'm already making to pay off costs from labs and imaging mentioned earlier. This created an unwinnable financial scenario.

I hope to raise funds in this time of need to offset the financial detriment that this life event has caused and keep me on my road to recovery. The future, being this is Cancer, also is assured to hold many more doctor visits, labs, and tests. If I fall behind now, I may never catch up. I find myself in a very humbling position to ask, but every bit helps. Thank You.