EXCLUSIVE: Emily Greenwood put her tiredness and weight loss down to being a busy mother – but the 21-year-old teacher from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, discovered the situation was far worse
A young teacher put her plummeting weight down to being a ‘busy mum’ – until she fell asleep while playing with her toddler and was eventually given a devastating diagnosis.
Emily Greenwood was rocked to her core when she was told she’d thyroid cancer. Emily had first noticed a pea-sized lump in the left side of her neck while driving to university in September last year.
At the time, the 21-year-old believed she was having an eczema flare up as she says this sometimes affects her lymph nodes and thought nothing of it. But when she nearly dozed off while playing with her two-year-old daughter Harriet and noticed she had dropped almost a stone-and-a-half in a matter of months, she became concerned.
Emily admits she first thought her tiredness and unexplained weight loss was a result of being a ‘busy mum’ and looking after her toddler every day. But unfortunately, after finding a ‘hard’ lump on her chin in January this year she thought it was best to book an appointment with her GP to have everything checked out.
Mum-of-one Emily said the doctor agreed her symptoms were concerning and put her in for blood tests and an ultrasound on her neck. When she got her blood tests results back, she claims her thyroid function test came back normal but her iron and folate levels were low.
Due to this she claims her GP just advised her to take iron and folate vitamins every morning to fix the problem. But after having her ultrasound, it detected a suspicious lymph node in her neck, and a thyroglossal cyst in her chin.
And following a biopsy Emily was sadly diagnosed with thyroid cancer and said it was ‘terrifying’ to hear the word cancer during her consultation. Thyroid cancer was considered a ‘rare’ cancer but rates have increased by more than a third (36%) in the last decade and tripled since the 90s.
However more than eight in 10 (84.3%) people diagnosed in England survive the disease for ten years or more – but there are still around 460 deaths from it every year. The soon-to-be-teacher then had to undergo a total thyroidectomy and neck dissection surgery in March this year to have the tumour and 25 lymph nodes removed.
Fortunately, Emily is soon said to be cancer-free following radioiodine treatment in July and then will be fit and healthy to start her career as a primary school teacher this September. She is now raising awareness about the need to push for a scan alongside a blood test if you find a lump as she claims her thyroid functions tests didn’t detect anything unusual.
Emily, from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, said: “I found it [the lump] when I was driving to university in September. It was just a little lump on the left side of my neck. It was pea-sized.
“I’ve got eczema so sometimes my lymph nodes swell up anyway so I thought it was just a normal lymph node. Over the next few months, it started getting bigger and by the end it was like a £2 but round. It was soft and moved around when I poked it.
“I got really, really tired. I’d be playing with my daughter and would almost be falling asleep. I’d be exhausted. I also lost loads of weight as well.
“I thought I looked a bit skinnier when I went out for a meal with my partner and daughter so I thought I’d weigh myself and weighed 43kg. In September I weighed 52kg. I put this and my exhaustion down to my busy life as a mum and running after my toddler.
“I didn’t think anything of these symptoms [at the time]. But when they started adding up, I thought I’d get checked out just in case. I was sorting my eyelashes out in the mirror of my car and I noticed a lump on my chin and this was hard.
“This is when I started to get really worried. This lump was a little bit bigger than a pea-sized lump. I got the blood test results back on my NHS app and they all said borderline and I needed to speak to my GP.
“It said my iron and folate levels were low but my thyroid functions came back fine. The GP just told me to take an iron and folate vitamin in the morning and I’d be fine. They thought it could just be anaemia and being worn out.
“But then I went for the ultrasound and that showed up a suspicious lymph node, which is the lump I could feel and I also had a thyroglossal cyst as well, which is the lump under my chin. When I got my diagnosis, I said to my consultant, ‘am I going to die?’ and he told me this was ‘good cancer’ and had the highest survival rate. Hearing cancer is still terrifying though.”
The thyroid is a small ‘butterfly-shaped’ gland, which sits in front of your windpipe in your neck. This gland secretes a substance called thyroxine which is the hormone that controls your metabolic rate and this is in charge of controlling your weight, appetite, body temperature, blood pressure and pulse.
Emily will now have to take medication for life to replace the function of her thyroid after having it removed. She is now raising awareness about her signs and symptoms of thyroid cancer and urges others to push for a scan instead of settling for a blood test if they find a lump.
Emily said: “I definitely wished I got the lump checked out straight away as the cancer may have not spread to my lymph nodes or reached my thyroid yet. If I had got it checked out sooner it would have been a lot better but luckily it is a slow growing cancer so it hadn’t spread too far yet.
“A lot of people say that thyroid cancer doesn’t have many specific symptoms but for me I felt really tired and lost loads of weight. I think you need to make sure the GP doesn’t just give you a blood test and send you on your way. You need an ultrasound and a biopsy if you have a lump. If we had just gone by this [my blood tests], I would have just been on iron tablets and still struggling.”
