not planned and as you can see i'm not in japan  i'm in a very canadian looking house is because  

i'm in canada at the moment i'm  gonna be here for a little while  

um i thought about whether or not i wanted to make  this video i wasn't too sure because it's pretty  

personal and i thought maybe i could just pretend  like the last couple months didn't happen and  

get back into vlogging when i  was ready and not address it but  

the past three months have just been an absolute  [ __ ] show and the only things that helped me  

get through it mentally were watching vlogs  of people that went through the same thing  

or were going through the same thing and it really  helped me out like i cannot explain how much of  

a comfort it was to see somebody who was going  through the same thing um and handling it okay  

and just uh getting some idea of what it was gonna  be like for me but anyways let me explain what the  

heck i'm talking about so as you guys know i just  moved apartments in japan i moved to a new city  

i'm based in sendai now i just moved into  my new apartment in july and i was there for  

five days before all of this happened and that  was such a good five days i've got mauro back  

and i really like my new apartment and i was  just so thrilled to be there in a new city  

and really excited about making videos for you  guys and i talked a lot about wanting to make  

videos in sunday for you and i'm sure you're all  wondering why the heck i haven't uploaded anything  

well yeah five days after i moved in  i started having troubles speaking  

it i'm still having problems now you can  probably tell my voice is a little messed up  

but it's really hard to explain it kind  of just felt like i had to really put a  

lot of effort into speaking and i felt really  exhausted after trying to talk for more than  

a couple minutes at a time and i was also having  problems swallowing and breathing at times so i  

found a clinic nearby my new apartment and  i popped in there and i asked them to just  

take a look at my throat see if there's anything  weird going on there and they took some blood  

tests my blood tests were all normal so i wasn't  too worried and then i went in for an ultrasound  

which is just um it's not painful it's just to see  the inside of your throat and see what's going on  

and there's an ultrasound technician that looks  at a screen and will record that information and  

pass it on to the doctor the technician doesn't  normally tell you anything because it's not their  

place to do so as she was like scanning  my throat she was taking so many pictures  

of this one location and she said is this  the first time you're having this looked at  

and i was like yeah first time just started having  troubles with it um these past couple weeks and  

it just got so bad today that i thought i  really should go in and get it checked out  

she was like okay well the doctor is going to  talk to you about this and that's just like ah  

that doesn't sound good i started to get a little  nervous i went back out to the waiting room and  

i sat there for about 20 minutes then the doctor  called me in and sat me down and right away he was  

like you have a giant tumor on your thyroid and i  was like oh okay didn't see that coming i really  

i didn't know what to expect but i think i had  maybe expected something more along the lines  

of maybe your thyroid is swollen or irritated or  like enlarged i didn't expect to hear that i had  

a tumor and then he followed that up with  and there is a 95 chance that it's cancer  

and i was just like oh okay i was not prepared  to hear this today i had not mentally prepared  

to hear that i have a large cancerous tumor  in my neck today so i don't know i was just  

shocked it's hard to explain how i felt i was  terrified and the worst part is he didn't really  

tell me much else he said we'll have to do some  more follow-up tests on it to see what's going on  

but my clinic is very busy so i can't  get you in for another three months

i really can't sit on this information  for three months like that's probably the  

some of the worst news i could have heard  from you and now i'm supposed to just  

act like normal and go about my life for three  months wondering what the heck is going on  

and if i'm gonna be okay and that was just to do  some more follow-up testing so i just felt like  

this was gonna be such a long process and  i really wasn't comfortable with that so i  

left the clinic and i did some research on thyroid  specialists in japan and i phoned up a bunch of  

them before before i did this i had to quickly  teach myself all these japanese words to do  

with thyroid and thyroid conditions and  tumors and cancer all of this vocabulary was  

brand new to me because i had never had  to use these words in japanese before  

so i did that and i kind of prepared myself to  talk about it in japanese and then i called up all  

the hospitals that i could find and every single  one told me the same thing they're full and the  

soonest they can get me in is probably three or  four months down the line so i talked to my family  

and uh i asked them to do some research to see  what they could find in canada they didn't really  

have any luck finding anything in canada either  there wasn't really much information online and i  

didn't really feel comfortable making a trip all  the way to canada to see a doctor if i couldn't  

learn something about them online beforehand to  make sure it's a reputable place and you know  

it has good reviews so we kept looking  and i think about maybe a week later  

my dad found a place in florida of all places  that had amazing reviews online it was a center  

that specializes in thyroid disease and thyroid  cancer and surgery of the removal of tumors and  

thyroid glands so all they did was thyroid stuff  and the reviews on google were just stellar like  

everybody said that they just had the best care  when they went there there were even people that  

said other doctors had told them their cancer was  terminal and they went to this hospital in florida  

and they were able to cure it so everything  just sounded really great about this hospital  

and even though florida is probably you know  one of the last places that i want to travel  

right now with covid and everything i  figured it was worth it so i contacted  

the hospital and i put in like um patient  request form with all my information and  

i uploaded my ultrasound files and stuff  so that the surgeon could check them out  

excuse me and then i just waited to hear back from  them and this was like the most excruciating i  

want to say it was probably about 10 days of  my life just wondering if i would hear back  

from them if they would accept me as a patient  like i'm sure it's a pain in the ass for them to  

have to deal with somebody who's located on the  other side of the world it would be much easier  

if they could just take somebody in america i'm  sure but um then i got a call one day at 3am in  

japan time and the lady was like uh good evening  sharla and i say uh it's actually 3am here but hey  

thanks for calling and it was the surgeon  the surgeon herself called me up and  

she wanted to talk to me and ask me some questions  about how i was feeling and she would give me a  

recommendation as to whether or not she thinks  i should have surgery to remove the tumor or  

yeah just how i should go about it from looking at  my scans and from talking to me about my symptoms  

etc the surgeon told me there's about a 50 50  chance that is cancer and she won't know until  

she removes the tumor and they're able to send  it off to a lab and examine it thoroughly that  

was kind of a relief to me because the doctor  in japan told me 95 chance so hearing 50 50 from  

the american surgeon kind of put my nerves like  at rest a little bit i felt a little happier  

with those odds even though they still kind of  suck and in the end we decided together that  

it would be best to remove it and she said they  could get me in in two weeks to do the surgery  

and i told her i might need a little bit longer  than that because traveling overseas is a bit  

of a process right now as we learned with the  morrow situation so i booked my surgery for a  

little further in advance to give me enough time  to get all my vaccine documents translated and to  

book flights and hotels and there's lots involved  luckily all of that prep went smoothly and um i  

took a flight to canada and i thought i would  spend a week with my family before heading down  

to florida just so that i could enjoy some time  with them without having to recover from surgery  

and then i flew down to florida it took three  flights from my hometown i had to go victoria  

vancouver toronto florida so i think i took a  total of eight planes last week eight different  

flights i'm so sick of planes so sick of flying  but made it to florida it was hot as [ __ ] there  

and really humid i didn't know what to expect you  hear so many bad things about florida online but  

every single person that i talked to there was  so nice uh i have nothing but good things to  

say about the people of florida so thank you for  your hospitality the taxi drivers were awesome  

and the hotel i stayed at yeah they're all  really cool i was there for two days before my  

appointment just to get settled in and uh the day  of my surgery i woke up at 5 00 am i decided to  

walk to the hospital because i didn't know if  i could trust the taxi to show up on time and  

i didn't want to be late it was only about  a 40 minute walk or so so it wasn't too bad  

and when i got to the hospital there was a really  pretty rainbow outside yeah it just felt like  

a good sign everything's gonna go fine today  i was nervous as hell i was so nervous so i  

got signed in at the hospital and they brought  me into um my little room i had a private room  

there they did a whole bunch of blood tests on me  to check my thyroid hormone levels and some more  

thorough ultrasounds apparently they have some  really high tech ultrasound machines there so  

they checked my thyroid and they also checked  all the lymph nodes in my neck and under my  

chin area to look for signs of abnormalities  in my lymph nodes because the first place  

that thyroid cancer will spread to is your lymph  nodes so they did a really thorough ultrasound of  

my whole neck and they told me they didn't see  anything abnormal there so that was really good if  

it was cancer it appears that it is all contained  to my thyroid and it hasn't spread anywhere yet  

from what they could see after my ultrasound  scans the nurse brought me back to my room  

and she told me to remove all my clothes and put  on these special socks that she gave me and just  

wait on the bed for the surgeon to come in and  do like one final examination before the surgery  

and i was like oh so just completely naked except  for the socks and she's like yep completely naked  

put the socks on and just wait for the surgeon  so i take off all my clothes i put on these  

ridiculous yellow socks and i'm just sitting on  the bed naked waiting for the surgeon to come in  

she comes in and she's like why are you naked  did they not give you a gown and i was like  

no she told me to take all my clothes  off and wait for you and she's like no  

that's no you put your gown on here have a gown  and she gave me a gown it was really embarrassing  

um but the surgeon is so cool really  really nice woman she's hilarious and

you