In light of having learned of my thyroid cancer at a stage when it is expected to be completely cured, I thought that now would be a good time to show how so many of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things I've endured in the past year actually saved my life (and helped heal a friend as well).

Following is a list of various discomforts and disasters I have suffered in the past year, taking note of the unexpected and often preventive graces that flowed from them:

Spring 2007

• A Manhattan gynecologist fails to diagnose my Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid.
  
  I had gone to see the doctor, supposedly one of the best practitioners in the New York City area, because of abnormally heavy periods — which I have since learned are one of the symptoms of the disease. If he had found the source of the problem, my treatment saga would have been different — but it's hard to say whether it would have turned out for the better.
  
  As it was, something happened while I was in the doctor's waiting room that had a profound impact on the life of a friend of mine.
  
  In that waiting room was a copy of Newsweek. Paging through it, I found a story about how a renegade Alcoholics Anonymous program in Washington, D.C., was being accused of cultlike behavior. This interested me, because I had a friend in D.C. who needed treatment for alcoholism but was frustrated because the AA groups he found were hostile to Catholics.
  
  The article went on to favorably mention a comprehensive rehab program in D.C. that was successfully treating people who had difficulties with the local AA. I remember phoning my friend from the waiting room to tell him about it.
  
  He joined the program and has been dry for eight months.
  
  
• I am suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by my last boyfriend on St. Patrick's Day 2007 — in the middle of Lent, no less.
  
  Although I suspected then, and am certain today, that we were not meant for each other, the experience was extremely traumatic. You could not have told me at the time that there was any sort of silver lining.
  
  One thing that's clear today is that, if the relationship had continued, I would not have looked for work outside the New York City area — and so the chain of events that led to my diagnosis and treatment would not have happened.
  
  
• My boss's boss at the Daily News chides me for using my earned vacation days to give talks promoting The Thrill of the Chaste, telling me that it was against company policy to use up vacation days piecemeal.
  
  "We don't take vacation days in the newsroom," he said bizarrely. "We take vacation weeks." I had never heard of my co-workers' abiding by such a policy, and it wasn't written in any employee manual that I could find. The only thing I could conclude was that the Daily News was none too pleased about having a globetrotting chastity lecturer on staff.
  
  The admonishment distressed me, because it made me realize I would have to look for work elsewhere, and I was unsure that I could find another job that would enable me to continue lecturing. But it was from that distress that I did find another job, causing me to move to Washington, D.C., and that is how my diagnosis and treatment began.

• As I prepare to move out of the New York City area and change jobs, my endocrinologist moves out of town and so I can no longer travel to the doctor who had kept tabs on the nodule on my thyroid.
  
  I had gone to see him once a year. It was always the same: He would feel the bump on the gland, which had tested benign sometime in the mid-1990s, and give me another year's worth of thyroid medication. Except for feeling the bump, which took all of five seconds, he could have phoned it in.
  
  If that doctor hadn't moved, I wouldn't have asked him for a referral to a nearby doctor. As it happened, the doctor to whom he referred me told me that I needed to get a second biopsy.
  
  Unlike my previous doctor, the new one had an ultrasound machine in his office. He scanned my nodule and gave me a copy of the scan so that I could show it to whoever would be my endocrinologist in my new hometown.
  
  
• Before leaving New York City, I attempt to make the most out of my Daily News insurance plan by getting a physical — and receive a misdiagnosis.
  
  My primary-care physician did a tuning-fork test on my ears and informed me that I needed to see an ear/nose/throat doctor, because I apparently had hearing loss. This later proved to be incorrect — but it led to my getting the care I really need in Washington, where ...

• ... I have an audiogram, which proves to be a waste of time — my hearing is fine.
  
  But, if I hadn't needed the audiogram, I wouldn't have been so quick to go to the medical center recommended by my father, who lives in town, to get referrals to specialists. I told the resident who saw me there that I need to see an endocrinologist and also an ear/nose/throat doctor. He gave me referrals for both, and I saw the ear/nose/throat doctor first.
  
  The ENT wrote me a prescription for an audiogram. When I mentioned to him that I was on thyroid medication and that I would be needing to see an endocrinologist, he informed me that he was in fact a thyroid specialist.
  
  It had never occurred to me that I could see an ENT instead of an endocrinologist for my thyroid. I show the doctor the ultrasound scan that my last doctor gave me and he writes a prescription for a biopsy of my nodule as well.
  
  Not being particularly eager to have a needle stuck in my throat, I got the audiogram first. A few months later, I finally dug out the prescription the ENT wrote me for the biopsy — and the saga began.
  
  After receiving the biopsy results — "suspicious for carcinoma" — I learned that my ENT was more than just any thyroid specialist. He is known as one of the best surgeons around. Yet, I never would have seen him had not that New York City doctor erroneously thought I was suffering hearing loss.

• My new job ends prematurely, a great disappointment to me at the time.
  
  It is obvious now, less than two months later, that if my job had not ended, I would not have had the leisure of being able to take time off for the first of what I now know will have to be two surgeries. More than that, I would not have gotten my new position, which gives me the flexibility of being able to work at home (more news on that when it's official).