Dear YLF,

I am back in DC after a month spent in Europe, visiting home and going for a week to Milan. I never got around to posting all my packing questions as things got ridiculously hectic and I was running around like a headless chicken. The trip was wonderful, though very tiring. Seeing my family for the first time after five years was surreal. I need to work on couple of posts about fashion and shopping in Milan ( I bought nothing other than two linen tees).

I also never got around to post about my good health news in mid April. I was supposed to get radioactive iodine treatment but based on a test scan done the day before the treatment the doctors have decided that I do not need it after all, as there was virtually no iodine uptake (which means that probably and hopefully all the bad cells were removed).

Later this week I am due for a new PET scan, as it has been 6 months from the end of the radiation treatment. And then a bunch of checkups with various specialists. I am really, really hoping that I get all clear.

Overall I am feeling pretty decent, other than one thing. I am ridiculously tired all the time and have virtually no energy. I sleep a lot. This makes getting anything done pretty difficult. I am back to full time work tough it is a challenge to be productive for 8 hours. I was told that this fatigue is fairly common in younger women after thyroid gland removal, and that nothing helps other than time, as the body needs quite lot of time to rewire its metabolism.. I really hope my energy goes up sooner than later.

I have many plans about various things I would like to do to slowly rebuild my life to some kind of normal state, but will hold off till I know the PET scan results. I am also hoping to increase my presence here, but so far almost every evening after work I would be so tired that I wasn't able to even post.

I have missed you all ( and read the posts regularly from home) and it is nice to be back.