The Intuition Intervention

Heeding that "Something doesn't feel right" instinct can be the difference between unnecessary suffering and getting the treatment you need.

- AMY PATUREL

FOR YEARS,44-year-old Tracy L. Rosa of Los Angeles suffered from troubling symptoms. She couldn't lose weight, constantly felt run down, and suffered from severe inflammation and joint pain. Trained in holistic bodywork and hypnotherapy, Rosa sensed that her thyroid gland was compromised. Supporting that idea was the knowledge that her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all had thyroid problems, including thyroid cancer. But since her own blood work had come back normal-with no evidence of any type of thyroid disease in the tests Rosa's doctor had orderedthe doctor brushed off her concerns.

Despite these assurances, Rosa's internal alarm bell got louder. When she heard a commercial that mentioned a link between swollen lymph nodes and thyroid cancer, she touched her neck and felt a swollen node. For someone with illness anxiety (formerly referred to as hypochondria), the power of suggestion might have been a strong factor here, but not in Rosa's case: "I knew at that moment that I had thyroid cancer," she says. She felt so sure partly because of her family history and partly because of her symptoms, but particularly because of an internal certainty that something was wrong.

She pushed her doctor for additional testing, which ultimately uncovered papillary thyroid cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes. "Within a month I had surgery to remove my thyroid and seven lymph nodesthree were cancerous," Rosa says.

"The pathology report also showed that I had undiagnosed Hashimoto's disease" (an autoimmune condition characterized by hypothyroidism). She finally had proof of what she'd thought for years: Her thyroid had been "off" even before she had developed cancer.

"Something Isn't Right"