Sophia,
My diagnosis was papillary thyroid cancer and my entire thyroid was removed in July 2015. I have done well ever since and my most recent quarterly blood test showed a good TSH level and my tumor marker was 0. Did they mention if you will be given radioactive iodine after surgery? Thyroid cancers are typically treated with a combination of surgery and radioactive iodine if there is any sign of metastasis, which they will not know until surgery. My ENT surgeon told me the metastasis would be into the lymph nodes adjacent to the thyroid and my tumor had just started to metastasize but they called it stage 3. So they removed 2 lymph nodes and I got 157 millicuries of radioactive iodine. If it’s cancer and the cancer is entirely self contained in the thyroid you probably will just need surgery, but they will not know until they do the surgery. My surgeon told me metastasis can usually be determined visually by the surgeon because the lymph nodes will look bluish if they have cancer in them. You will need to go on synthroid after the thyroid is removed partially or fully and if you have cancer you will have quarterly blood tests on TSH and tumor markers. They only had to adjust my synthroid once when TSH ran too low so they reduced my dosage by 7.5% by making me take a half a pill one day a week. My tumor marker (it’s a protein thyroid cancer cells generate) has been 0 since 2015.
One thing I am not clear on is why the needle biopsy wasn’t conclusive. Mine was. They saw/see the nodule on the ultrasound and poked me a few times (I presume in the nodule) and in a man it’s near the Adam’s Apple and it hurts!!! They knew it was PTC after the biopsy and the only issue for surgery was if it had metastasized. I gave the surgeon consent to remove it entirely if he found a metastasis, and he did.
Good luck with the surgery.